On Relativity of Knowledge

“The Chinthanaya the way we have formulated is a deeper concept than the paradigm. Those who refer to a change from coca cola to pepsi cola as a paradigm shift need not make an attempt to understand what is meant by Chinthanaya. They could refer to it as a Chauvinist or a racist concept of the Sinhala Chauvinists. It does not matter as it is relative to their ignorance.”

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by Prof. Nalin de Silva

(The views expressed are his own)

(February 08, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) I believe in the philosophy of relativity not only in western or any other Physics but with respect to knowledge in general. To me knowledge, whether in Physics or History, is created by people relative to their sense organs, culture and mind. This takes place in a Chinthanaya which itself is part of culture. However, though Chinthanaya is part of the culture it is also the thread that runs through all aspects of the latter. Thus I am not reducing knowledge to either culture or Chinthanaya.

The above statements on knowledge too are relative to a culture and not absolute. In this case the statements of this particular epistemology have been created in Sinhala Theravada Buddhist culture, and if somebody were to question as to whether the knowledge of a relativistic epistemology is absolute we would not reply in the affirmative, and all that we would say is that this particular epistemology which we call constructionist relativism (Nirmanathmaka Sapekshathavadaya) is at least internally consistent to a very high degree, unlike many other epistemologies. For example an epistemology that assumes an objective reality independent of the man has an uphill task in attempting to show objectively that an objective reality exists. One would say that it is an ontological problem and not something that belongs to epistemology. However the way one "acquires" a knowledge of the existence of an objective reality is in the realm of epistemology. It has to be emphasised that though western philosophy has an epistemology separated from an ontology, it is not possible to do so even relative to western philosophy.

It has to be mentioned, at the outset, that the above epistemology though may sound similar to theories on social construction of knowledge in what is known as Sociology of Knowledge, is much wider in its base. In theories on what is called social construction of knowledge it is readily accepted that knowledge is created or constructed in a given society. The social constructionists emphasise that knowledge is created in societies but do not attempt to explain how knowledge is constructed in these societies. Thus creation of knowledge is left unexplained. In other words there is no theory to explain how theories are created though it is said that theories are constructed by people living in societies.

In "Nirmanathmaka Sapekshathavadaya" the relative knowledge, one speaks of is not the relative knowledge of something that absolutely exists. In the normal relativity theories, including those of the postmodernists, one has to deal with the way certain phenomena appear with respect to different observers. It is assumed that certain things exist "absolutely" and they appear differently to different observers. Even in the theory of relativity in Physics, there exists an absolute space-time which is observed by different observers in a manner relative to them. The so-called space-time interval of two events remains the same for different observers whether in the special theory or in the general theory of relativity. "Nirmanathmaka Sapekshathavadaya" differs from all the other relativistic epistemologies and theories, as there it is the observer who constructs knowledge as if out of nothing, due to the "avidya" of the observer. Even the observer who is "absolute" in the western theories, is relative to himself/herself in "Nirmanathmaka Sapekshathavadaya". As there is no "soul" in Sinhala Theravada Buddhism, in "Nirmanathmaka Sapekshathavadaya" it has been shown how the mind creates itself without referring to any "other".

It was Prof. Thomas Kuhn who introduced the concept of paradigm with respect to creating knowledge. He showed that in Physics, what is referred to as Newtonian Physics is based on certain axioms, assumptions etc., which he called a paradigm. He opposed the views of Prof. Karl Popper who had said that in (western) science, the scientists advance knowledge by trying to falsify the existing theories. Kuhnian view was that in (western) science there are what are known as normal periods and revolutionary periods. During the normal periods the scientists carry out normal work and they only work to show that the existing theories are correct. However there are revolutionary periods in science during which the existing paradigm is replaced by a new paradigm. The Einsteinian revolution that took place hundred years ago in 1905 (incidentally the year of Physics has begun in the western world to celebrate hundred years of Relativity and other theories on photo electric effect and Brownian motion created by Dr. Einstein in 1905) changed the Newtonian paradigm and introduced new axioms and assumptions with respect to space and time. Now it is space-time and not space and time, somewhat similar, though superficially, to the way the Tamil racists and some others use northeast instead of north and east. However northeast does not belong to the Einsteinian paradigm as even a square centimeter of the north of a racist A does not become part of the east of a racist B.

In the Kuhnian scheme theories in (western) science are created in a given paradigm and one may say that theories are relative to a paradigm. With paradigm shifts not only theories but meanings associated with concepts change. (In Sri Lanka in the seminar circuit the term paradigm shift is used in a very mundane way and sometimes even a change of drinking habits from coca cola to pepsi cola is called a paradigm shift.) For example the space and time of a Newtonian observer is not the same as the space-time of an Einsteinian observer. Though the same words space and time are used the hyphen in the Einsteinian paradigm gives them a different meaning altogether. In the paradigm of Quantum Physics a particle does not mean the same thing as a particle in Newtonian Physics. This change of meaning does not have to wait for a paradigm shift to take place. Even within a paradigm meanings change as most of us are familiar with. The meanings of the words change with time (this is a tautology as there is no time without change) and one does not have to be a postmodernist to observe this phenomenon. Also words have specific meanings only in a given context and the same word could be used to denote different things in different contexts. Here again there was no need for the world to wait for a Saussure to recognise this simple phenomenon.

However something more difficult to recognise was pointed by Prof. Feyerabend who created his concept of incommensurability. What he said essentially was that the objects that fell to the ground in Galilean Physics were not the same as those that fell under Newtonian gravitation attraction. Needless to say that the objects that move around in the space-time of the Theory of General Relativity are different from those in either Galilean Physics or Newtonian Physics. The objects as far as an ordinary observer is concerned do not change. To an ordinary observer the objects that were dropped from the leaning tower of Pisa in Italy were not different from the apples and other objects that fell to the ground in the seventeenth century England. Neither were they different from the bombs that were dropped in Germany as well as by Germany in the first half of the twentieth century. What is different is the way the western Physicists look at these various droppings.

In Galilean Physics the objects fell near the earth with the same constant acceleration and there was no gravitational force or gravitational field that made these objects to fall in Italy in the early seventeenth century. The objects fell with the same constant acceleration and those dropped from equal heights simultaneously reached the ground simultaneously. In Newtonian Physics it was different. The apples in England did not fall with a constant acceleration though different apples had the same acceleration at equal heights from the ground. For any one apple the acceleration varied with the height and moreover the apples now had a gravitational force, that later became a gravitational field under the influence of another Cambridge Theoretical Physicist Dr. Maxwell, to respond to. In Feyerabendian scheme these two views are incommensurable. To further complicate matters the bombs in Germany in the twentieth century did not have a gravitational field in which they could fall. Einsteinian Physics had exorcised the gravitational field. The bombs themselves, together with the other objects created the space-time, made it curved, and moved in the curved space-time. In Newtonian England apples responded to the space and time, but the space and time did not reciprocate to respond to the apples. However, in Einsteinian Germany things were different. Not only the bombs responded to the space-time but the space-time very kindly returned the compliment by responding to the bombs.

The Chinthanaya the way we have formulated is a deeper concept than the paradigm. Those who refer to a change from coca cola to pepsi cola as a paradigm shift need not make an attempt to understand what is meant by Chinthanaya. They could refer to it as a Chauvinist or a racist concept of the Sinhala Chauvinists. It does not matter as it is relative to their ignorance. Those who vomit words such as paradigm shift without understanding them should be allowed to enjoy their stupidity.

I am mainly concerned, in this series of articles with distortion of History. Now as we have very often said if Physics is relative then History cannot be objective. The question is as some imitators in Sri Lanka of Postmodernism claim, is History a fantasy? If not, and if it is relative then whose History are we to believe?

Before we proceed further it has to be mentioned that the relativity of knowledge does not imply that any one can say anything on any matter. Though people are entitled to express their opinion according to western human rights, no court in the west would accept all the evidence given by witnesses. The courts have a way of deciding what is truth and what is not truth. The truth as decided by the courts could be referred to as the Judicial truth. Similarly there are Mathematical truths and Historical truths. The truth does not refer to an absolute truth but to a truth as decided according to the "criteria" employed by a particular discipline or a field to decide what truth is. The criteria could differ from discipline to discipline.

History is always of the past but expressed at present. History is what and how we interpret and relate at present what has happened in the past. However, it does not mean that something absolute has happened in the past and we are trying to "discover" that absolute. History like anything else is our creation, construction, and it is relative to the person or the group of persons who relate and interpret events. The events themselves are our creations in the sense that they are related by us. One should compare with the interpretations given to "falling" objects in Galilean, Newtonian and Einsteinian Physics. In the Einsteinian Physics it should be emphasised that the objects do not even fall. They merely roam in space-time, simultaneously helping to create it.

History has to be consistent internally and externally with respect to other related disciplines. One cannot get up in the morning and say that one is a descendant of King Rajasinghe the second, nor that King Devanampiya Thissa was a Tamil whose name was Devanampiya Thesam. Consistency is one of the criteria used by the Historians. If one were to say let us drop that criterion then one should come out with strong objections to consistency of History. However, then the question arises as to what is meant by consistency. Even consistency is relative to the particular logic that is used in the system of knowledge.

(Professor Nalin de Silva is a Sri Lankan theoretical physicist, philosopher and a political analyst. He is a Professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka.)