by Naresh Jotwani

A young physicist on vacation, trekking through a dense jungle, had to spend a night at a hamlet with a tribe of friendly jungle-dwellers. In the morning, fully rested, he saw tribal elders praying in front a few small piles of dust of different colours. The dust was yellow in one pile, orange in another, red in yet another … and so on. The coloured piles were neatly arranged in a geometric pattern.

Later, he inquired politely about the significance of the various types of dust towards which the tribe was being reverential. He was told by a high priest that the various types of dust were the ultimate constituents of the universe, and therefore they must be shown the highest form of reverence known to man.

The physicist asked the high priest how they knew that the various types of dust made up the ultimate constituents of the universe. The high priest told him that they had followed a scientific process to reach that conclusion. They had taken samples of all the types of solid objects available to them: rocks, sand, wood, bones, seeds, skin, ivory, shells … and so on, and ground these objects to as fine a dust as was technologically possible. They were thereby convinced that each type of dust thus obtained – because it could not be ground any finer – was an ultimate constituent of the universe. Since all the things known man had been thus ground and collected, the ultimate building blocks of the universe had been discovered. Simple! No mystery!

‘But how can you be sure that the universe does not contain objects which are beyond our reach?’, the physicist asked a friendly tribal elder. He sensed he might be pushing his luck, but his scientific curiosity won the day.

‘Ha, ha, ha!’, the elder had a hearty laugh. ‘Young man, you will not understand! For generations upon generations, our venerable elders have explored and gathered all the types of objects which make up the world. They have gone to the edge of the ocean, to the top of the high mountain, and deep into caves. Trust me, young man, we have with us here all the constituents of the universe. Now make sure you pray to them before moving on!’ 

The physicist kept quiet, politely made a show of praying, thanked the elders for their hospitality and proceeded to finish his trek through the jungle.

Soon he was back at Caltech, helping smash particles against each other in powerful particle accelerators. His seniors had assured him confidently — after every failed experiment — that what they discovered next would be the ultimate constituents of the universe. Senior bosses reminded younger scientists frequently – in subtle and sometimes even not-so-subtle ways – that their research funding depended on that assertion being made with full confidence. Of course it was also common knowledge that timely mortgage payments depended on the continued flow of research funds.

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However, after his jungle encounter with the dust-worshippers, a few nagging questions began to disturb the young physicist.

Which eminent scientist had stated — clearly and unequivocally — that atom-smashers, however powerful, would discover the ultimate constituents of the universe? Everyone seemed to believe that that would be the outcome of their experiments, but nobody had seen any proof! Indeed, what would such a proof look like? One would have to extrapolate to billions of light-years the results observed in the atom-smashers! How could one even prove the logical correctness of such an extrapolation technique?

But if such proof could not be found, how was the tribe of physicists any different from the tribe of dust-worshippers he had met in the jungle?

Did both the tribes not rely on unproven – and quite possibly unprovable – assertions? In the absence of critical thinking, does the hallowed ‘Science’ not degenerate into blind faith, and therefore perhaps even fraud? Can the spirit of scientific enquiry survive a powerful bureaucracy? Was the Roman Catholic church of Galileo’s time not just such a bureaucracy?