Top Heavy

High Cost for Being Lead

For the last ten thousand years or so of the recorded history human societies have been conferring on people at the top enormous powers, privileges, honours and wealth. These bounties have been out of all proportions when compared to stark malnutrition, diseases, deprivation and humiliation suffered by the vast majority of toiling masses. Have we humans found this steep pyramidal model of welbeing useful for the preservation and progress of our communities? What advantage has this seemingly unjust disparity conferred on the society as a whole? The question is all the more intriguing when we find that the selection itself of the people at the top has seldom been thoughtful, judicious or merit-based. At its best, it has generally been random. What is more intriguing is that if the people at the top have greedily and eagerly usurped these bounties the people at the bottom have been equally eager and willing to part away with the fruits of their labour. One can say the latter have done so in exchange for assurances of a reasonably minimum subsistence and promises of some kind of security. Apparently this is an insufficient justification for such an unequal quid pro quo? Then, what is our compulsion for this extraordinary behavior?

Are we genetically predisposed to worship the leader? Late Carl Sagan was fond of pointing out that our closest living sister species, namely, chimpanzee, exhibited similar behaviour in this context. A typical 60-odd-member chimp group living in the wild in Africa invariably has one alpha male to preside over it. This alpha male commands unquestioned respect from all other male and female adults and youngsters and enjoys enormous privileges. Early in the morning all members go to him and offer their obeisance. They offer their bottom to him as if saying, 'fuck me if you please.' If the alpha male touches them softly with his hand, the folks come back as if blessed and reassured of a good day. The reverence of the group members for the alpha male is comparable to human respect to Pope like religious personage.

Well, that is in the wild. And when we also lived in the wild as hunter-gatherers we also might have needed such a regime of raja and praja. But were we not expected to behave differently after having developed into agricultural, industrial and now highly advanced technological civilizations. No doubt, we owe our advancement to countless named and unnamed scientists, engineers, innovators and workmen in addition to literatures, thinkers and artists, and all them deserve to be suitably rewarded, but what about kings, queens and their babies; what about sages and seers; what about witch doctors; what about robbers and looters; what about entrepreneurs with fake credential; or what about just lucky ducks? We need to ponder.

Are the Laws of Nature Eternal?

Are the Laws of Nature Eternal?

This and other similar and simple questions are both philosophic and scientific. Given the enormous knowledge of the universe from atom downwards to clusters of galaxies upwards painstakingly gleaned by the modern scientific enterprise in the last couple of centuries it is no longer preposterous to ask questions about the nature of so called Laws of Nature. The questions such as, are laws of nature divine? Are they eternal? Did they exist before the Big Bang, so to say? From the Big Bang onwards did the structures and systems matter and energy evolve according to the laws of nature or did the laws of nature emerge as properties of the randomly evolving structures and systems?

The modern science has stumbled upon an array of evidence in support of the theory that our universe came into being with a big bang some 13.7 billions years ago. The glow of that enormously hot event can still be felt in the background radiation. WMAP telescope stationed in space since 2003 has even provided vivid photographs of the universe when it was only 3.8 millions years old. The uneven distribution of matter in space revealed in these pictures can be seen as precursor of our present day clusters of galaxies.

There is therefore general agreement as to how and when the universe originated and evolved into present matter, black matter and black energy. It is also consensually believed that time also originated along with the universe. What seems to be outdebated and left ambiguous is whether laws of nature also originated at a point of time and evolved in course of time or they existed before the origin of the universe and the time.

One of the basic postulates of Einstein's theory of Relativity is that the laws of nature are the same everywhere irrespective of the observer's position or motion. He also postulated that the speed of light is the same for all observers and that it is the upper speed limit that no moving object in the cosmos is allowed to transgress. These and similar postulates give the laws of nature an aurora of divinity.

I have a hunch: The laws of nature as observed in the macro world by the modern science are neither eternal, nor universal. They did not exist before the big bang. They were also not there during a relatively brief period immediately after the big bang and before the randomly moving subatomic particulars got organized into atoms and other structures. Today, these laws seem to us all pervading. With their help we can precisely predict the events and assign them to definite causal factors. But in themselves these laws are not independent. They are mere manifestations of the properties of evolving systems.

In support of my hunch I would like to say that relic of the said brief period still exist. The state of matter immediately after the big bang and before the matter was organized into systems and sub-systems such as atoms, molecules, stars and galaxies can still be observed in the micro world of today. This world abounds in materials of pre-structures and pre-systems era. In this micro world, the behavior of these materials, namely subatomic particles, is unpredictable. Even today they are governed by famous Uncertainty Principle. Indeterminacy is the law there. This indeterminacy, it appears might have ruled the world immediately after the Big Bang and the definitive and predictable behavior of matter might have evolved after matter got organized into systems.


- Baldev Raj Dawar
January 5, 2008