Our Ancestors Knew That...

One very interesting book I have read recently, “A Universe From Nothing” by Lawrence Krauss, describes, as the name implies, a theory that would explain how our universe popped out of nothing---it has to do with something called quantum gravity. When I wrote about it in a group email to my ex-classmates at IIT, one of the guys shot back saying that this is nothing new and that our ancestors knew that way back when. Then he quoted some reference in the Vedas, the “good books” for Hindus.

When I though about this, I became intrigued by the question---Assuming that what my friend was saying is true, and knowing his scholarly bona fide I have no doubt that it is, how did our ancestors know about how the universe was created? For that matter, how did the Greeks know about atoms in the fifth century BCE (Leucippus and Democritus)?

First of all, I am certain that they did not know that universe popped out of nothing or that matter is indeed composed of atoms---they speculated. There is no way that they could have proven that their speculation was anything but that. The fact that some of these speculations have turned out to be right is not because of some extraordinary knowledge that our ancients possessed or aliens helping out. It can be explained by our selective memory.

These ancients speculated all kinds of things, and we tend to remember only those that have proven to be true. For example, the Jain scriptures talk about earth balanced on a mountain, and that certainly did not turn out to be true. Devout Christians talk about the universe being created in six-days by god some six thousand years ago.  That speculation is not widely used to demonstrate that our ancients knew everything.

Science makes progress when someone speculates, or creates a hypothesis, to explain something and then sets about proving or disproving it. That being the case, I am wondering if any of these ancient speculations played any part in developing modern scientific hypotheses. For example, did John Dalton, who is credited with the scientific theory of atom, rely on what the ancients were speculating?  If so, one has to give credit where the credit is due, and the ancients deserve a pat on the back.

However, that does not take away any credit from the ones who prove a hypothesis to be true. It is only through extraordinary work that the scientific community has developed such a precise picture of what our universe is like. It is one thing to speculate that it is so, and another to prove it.

The ancients were smart and contributed a lot to the development of our civilization, but so are our current scientists and let’s not forget that.