HINDUISM: “Thou Before Whom All Words Recoil”

Reference: Hinduism

Note: The original Text is provided below.
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God is the ultimate postulate. It is Sat, Chit, Ananda—the oneness of existence, the consciousness of things as they are, and the bliss of total comprehension.

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Summary

The first principle to be learned in speaking of God is what to leave out. Words cannot describe the ultimate reality of God. Our minds can grasp only those things that can be sensed. God is beyond anything that can be sensed. The process “neti, neti” (not this, not this) leads to that conclusion. But it does not mean that we can never know the Abysmal God. That knowledge transcends the rational mind. The best mind can do is to point in the right direction through the use of concepts.

The name the Hindus give to the supreme reality is Brahman. The chief attributes to be linked with the name are sat (pure beingness), chit (pure awareness), and ananda (pure bliss). This is the basic Hindu view that serves as a pointer to the supreme reality. It is a high order abstraction. But those who can’t conceive of such an abstraction are advised to think of God as the archetype of the noblest reality they encounter in the natural world. On the whole India has been content to encourage the devotee to conceive of Brahman as either personal or transpersonal, depending on which carries the most exalted meaning for the mind in question.

Conceived in personal terms, God will stand in relation to the world as an artist to his or her handiwork. God will be Creator (Brahma), Preserver (Vishnu), and Destroyer (Shiva), who in the end resolves all finite forms back into the primordial nature from which they sprang. On the other hand, conceived transpersonally, God stands above the struggle, aloof from the finite in every respect. The world will still be God-dependent; but God will not have intentionally willed the world. God serves an entirely different function for the transpersonalist. The transpersonalist has become so possessed by the goal as to forget all else, even the encouragement of supporting companions.

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Comments

The postulate of God may be held differently by different minds, but then everything else proceeds from this postulate as a consistent whole.

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Original Text

The first principle of Japanese ikebana flower arrangement is to learn what to leave out. This is also the first principle to be learned in speaking of God, the Hindus insist. People are forever trying to lay hold of Reality with words, only in the end to find mystery rebuking their speech and their syllables swallowed by silence. The problem is not that our minds are not bright enough. The problem lies deeper. Minds, taken in their ordinary, surface sense, are the wrong kind of instrument for the undertaking. The effect, as a result, is like trying to ladle the ocean with a net, or lasso the wind with a rope. The awe-inspiring prayer of Shankara, the Thomas Aquinas of Hinduism, begins with the invocation, “Oh Thou, before whom all words recoil.”

The human mind has evolved to facilitate survival in the natural world. It is adapted to deal with finite objects. God, on the contrary, is infinite and of a completely different order of being from what our minds can grasp. To expect our minds to corner the infinite is like asking a dog to understand Einstein’s equation with its nose. This analogy becomes misleading if, pressed in a different direction, it suggests that we can never know the Abysmal God. The yogas, we have seen, are roads to precisely such realization. But the knowledge to which they lead transcends the knowledge of the rational mind; it rises to the deep yet dazzling darkness of the mystical consciousness. The only literally accurate description of the Unsearchable of which the ordinary mind is capable is neti…neti, not this…not this. If you traverse the length and breadth of the universe saying of everything you can see and conceive, “not this…not this,” what remains will be God.

And yet words and concepts cannot be avoided. Being the only equipment at our mind’s disposal, any conscious progress toward God must be made with their aid. Though concepts can never carry the mind to its destination, they can point in the right direction. 

We may begin simply with a name to hang our thoughts on. The name the Hindus give to the supreme reality is Brahman, which has a dual etymology, deriving as it does from both br, to breathe, and brih, to be great. The chief attributes to be linked with the name are sat, chit, and ananda; God is being, awareness, and bliss. Utter reality, utter consciousness, and utterly beyond all possibility of frustration—this is the basic Hindu view of God. Even these words cannot claim to describe God literally, however, for the meanings they carry for us are radically unlike the senses in which they apply to God. What pure being would be like, being infinite with absolutely nothing excluded, of this we have scarcely an inkling. Similarly with awareness and joy. In Spinoza’s formulation God’s nature resembles our words about as much as the dog star resembles a dog. The most that can be said for these words is that they are pointers; our minds do better to move in their direction than in the opposite. God lies on the further side of being as we understand it, not nothingness; beyond minds as we know them, not mindless clay; beyond ecstasy, not agony. 

This is as far as some minds need go in their vision of God: infinite being, infinite consciousness, infinite bliss—all else is at best commentary, at worst retraction. There are sages who can live in this austere, conceptually thin atmosphere of the spirit and find it invigorating; they can understand with Shankara that “the sun shines even without objects to shine upon.” Most people, however, cannot be gripped by such high-order abstractions. That C. S. Lewis is among their number is proof that their minds are not inferior, only different. Professor Lewis tells us that while he was a child his parents kept admonishing him not to think of God in terms of any form, for these could only limit his infinity. He tried his best to heed their instructions, but the closest he could come to the idea of a formless God was an infinite sea of grey tapioca. 

This anecdote, the Hindus would say, points up perfectly the circumstance of the man or woman whose mind must bite into something concrete and representational if it is to find life-sustaining meaning. Most people find it impossible to conceive, much less be motivated by, anything that is removed very far from direct experience. Hinduism advises such people not to try to think of God as the supreme instance of abstractions like being or consciousness, and instead to think of God as the archetype of the noblest reality they encounter in the natural world. This means thinking of God as the supreme person (Ishvara or Bhagavan), for people are nature’s noblest crown. Our discussion of bhakti yoga, the path to God through love and devotion, has already introduced us to God conceived in this way. This, in Pascal’s Western idiom, is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, not the God of the philosophers. It is God as parent, lovingly merciful, omniscient, almighty, our eternal contemporary, the companion who understands.

God so conceived is called Saguna Brahman, or God-with-attributes as distinct from the philosophers’ more abstract Nirguna Brahman, or God-without-attributes. Nirguna Brahman is the ocean without a ripple; Saguna Brahman the same ocean alive with swells and waves. In the language of theology, the distinction is between personal and transpersonal conceptions of God. Hinduism has included superb champions of each view, notably Shankara for the transpersonal and Ramanuja for the personal; but the conclusion that does most justice to Hinduism as a whole and has its own explicit champions like Sri Ramakrishna is that both are equally correct. At first blush this may look like a glaring violation of the law of the excluded middle. God may be either personal or not, we are likely to insist, but not both. But is this so? What the disjunction forgets, India argues, is the distance our rational minds are from God in the first place. Intrinsically, God may not be capable of being two contradictory things—we say may not because logic itself may melt in the full blaze of the divine incandescence. But concepts of God contain so much alloy to begin with that two contradictory ones may be true, each from a different angle, as both wave and particles may be equally accurate heuristic devices for describing the nature of light. On the whole India has been content to encourage the devotee to conceive of Brahman as either personal or transpersonal, depending on which carries the most exalted meaning for the mind in question.

God’s relation to the world likewise varies according to the symbolism that is embraced. Conceived in personal terms, God will stand in relation to the world as an artist to his or her handiwork. God will be Creator (Brahma), Preserver (Vishnu), and Destroyer (Shiva), who in the end resolves all finite forms back into the primordial nature from which they sprang. On the other hand, conceived transpersonally, God stands above the struggle, aloof from the finite in every respect. “As the sun does not tremble, although its image trembles when you shake the cup filled with water in which the sun’s light is reflected; thus the Lord also is not affected by pain, although pain be felt by that part of him which is called the individual soul.” The world will still be God-dependent. It will have emerged in some unfathomable way from the divine plenitude and be sustained by its power. “He shining, the sun, the moon and the stars shine after Him; by His light all is lighted. He is the Ear of the ear, the Mind of the mind, the Speech of the speech, the Life of life, the Eye of the eye.” But God will not have intentionally willed the world, nor be affected by its inherent ambiguity, imperfections, and finitude.

The personalist will see little religious availability in this idea of a God who is so far removed from our predicaments as to be unaware of our very existence. Is it not religion’s death to despoil the human heart of its final treasure, the diamond of God’s love? The answer is that God serves an entirely different function for the transpersonalist, one that is equally religious, but different all the same. If one is struggling against a current it is comforting to have a master swimmer by one’s side. It is equally important that there be a shore, solid and serene, that lies beyond the struggle as the terminus of all one’s splashings. The transpersonalist has become so possessed by the goal as to forget all else, even the encouragement of supporting companions.

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December 22, 2022 – 5:55 AM Categories: Hinduism, Religion | Comments (15)

Physics I: Chapter 15

Reference: Beginning Physics I

CHAPTER 15: THERMODYNAMICS I: TEMPERATURE & HEAT

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KEY WORD LIST

Macroscopic Systems, Thermodynamics, Quasistatic Systems, Thermodynamic Variables, Mechanical Equilibrium, Chemical Equilibrium, Thermal Equilibrium, Thermodynamic Equilibrium, Temperature, Zeroth Law of Thermodynamics, Thermometric Property, Celsius Scale, Ice Point, Steam Point, Fahrenheit Scale, Thermometer, Constant Volume Gas Thermometer, Kelvin Temperature Scale, Rankine Temperature Scale, Triple Point, Coefficient of Linear Expansion, Caloric, Thermal Energy, Heat, Internal Energy, Calorie, British Thermal Unit, Specific Heat, Heat Capacity, Calorimetry, Heat of Fusion, Heat of Vaporization, Heat of Sublimation, P-T Diagram, Evaporation

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GLOSSARY

For details on the following concepts, please consult CHAPTER 15.

MACROSCOPIC SYSTEMS
These are large systems that are characterized by their having myriad atoms and/or molecules. They depend on the myriad random motions and interactions of the component atoms and molecules, rather than their lockstep behavior.

THERMODYNAMICS
Thermodynamics deals with macroscopic systems. More specifically, it deals with the relations between heat and other forms of energy (such as mechanical, electrical, or chemical energy), and, by extension, of the relationships between all forms of energy.

QUASISTATIC SYSTEMS
Quasistatic systems mean that they are in mechanical, chemical, and thermal equilibrium, or that their properties vary so slowly that they can be described at any instant as if in equilibrium.

THERMODYNAMIC VARIABLES
Thermodynamic variables (or macroscopic variables) are physical properties, such as, volume and internal energy, which describe the system as a whole. Most other thermodynamic variables, such as, pressure and temperature can be defined only if the system is quasistatic.

MECHANICAL EQUILIBRIUM
This is understood to mean not only that the system as a whole does not accelerate, but that within the system the different parts are in mechanical equilibrium with each other —no churning of fluids and no pressure imbalances.

CHEMICAL EQUILIBRIUM
A system in mechanical equilibrium may still undergo change through a chemical reaction. The system is in chemical equilibrium when there is no change in chemical composition taking place.

THERMAL EQUILIBRIUM
A system in mechanical and chemical equilibrium may still undergo change in temperature. Two objects in thermal equilibrium with each other are also said to be at the same temperature.

THERMODYNAMIC EQUILIBRIUM
A system that is in mechanical, chemical and thermal equilibrium with its surroundings, as well as internally is said to be in thermodynamic equilibrium. Thermodynamic equilibrium means that there is no change on the macroscopic level.

TEMPERATURE
Temperature is a numerical value that we assign to each thermal equilibrium state of a system as determined by some agreed-upon procedure.

ZEROTH LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS
If two systems A and B are each found to be in thermal equilibrium with a third system C, then when the two systems A and B are brought into contact with each other, they are themselves found to be in thermal equilibrium.

THERMOMETRIC PROPERTY
A thermometric property is a property that varies with the thermal equilibrium states in a well-defined and reproducible way. For example, mercury in a sealed hollow bulb attached to a long, thin hollow glass stem. When mercury expands or contracts with change in the thermal equilibrium state, small changes in its volume are observable from its height in the thin stem.

CELSIUS SCALE
This is the most widely used temperature scale that assigns the number tC = 0°C for the ice point, and tC =100°C for steam point at atmospheric pressure. The distance between these two points is divided into 100 equal marked intervals labeled in 1°C steps.

ICE POINT
The point at which ice and water are in thermal equilibrium at atmospheric pressure.

STEAM POINT
The point at which steam, and water are in thermal equilibrium at atmospheric pressure.

FAHRENHEIT SCALE
On this scale the ice point and steam point are defined as tF = 32°F and tF = 212°F respectively, and the distance between these two points is divided into 180 equal marked intervals labeled in 1°F steps.

THERMOMETER
A thermometer is a temperature-calibrated mercury system, which can be used to measure the temperature of any other object. However, the temperature scale shall be dependent on the material being used to define it.

CONSTANT VOLUME GAS THERMOMETER
This thermometer consists of a gas confined to a fixed volume, with an open-tube manometer used to measure the pressure of the gas inside. Constant volume gas thermometer is often considered the “standard” against which other thermometers are calibrated.

KELVIN TEMPERATURE SCALE
The graphs of pressure vs. temperature of all very low-density gases at fixed volumes are straight lines. When extrapolated these straight lines intersect the temperature axis at the same point: -273.15°C. On the basis of this result, one defines the Kelvin (or absolute) temperature scale. It is same as the Celsius Scale with its zero shifted to “-273.15°C”.

T = tC + 273.15

RANKINE TEMPERATURE SCALE
This is the Kelvin scale using the Fahrenheit degree rather than the Celsius degrees.

TR = tF + 459.67

TRIPLE POINT
The triple point is the temperature, tC = 0.01°C, at which all three phases of water—solid, liquid, and vapor—coexist.

COEFFICIENT OF LINEAR EXPANSION
If we have a rod of length L at a given absolute temperature and we increase the temperature by a small amount ∆T, we find that the length of the rod increases b an amount ∆L that is proportional to the original length L and to the temperature increase ∆T:

∆L = a L∆T

The proportionality constant a is called the coefficient of linear expansion; it depends on the material of which the rod is made.

CALORIC
Early scientists believed that some invisible and weightless substance, which they called caloric, flows from a hotter to cooler object until both objects reach thermal equilibrium.

THERMAL ENERGY
It became clear through the efforts of Joule and others that it is not caloric but thermal energy that is transferred between two macroscopic systems in contact.

HEAT
Heat is the thermal energy transfer from one system to another. Heat is actually the statistical “summing up” of the mechanical work done by the random interactions of the individual atoms and molecules of the two systems.

INTERNAL ENERGY
Related to heat is the internal energy that resides in a system due to the random motion and jiggling of the myriad atoms and molecules making up that system.

CALORIE (CAL)
A calorie is defined as the “amount of heat” (thermal energy in transit) necessary (at atmospheric) to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water 1°C. 1 cal = 4.184 J

BRITISH THERMAL UNIT (BTU)
A Btu is the amount of heat necessary to raise 1 lb of water 1°F. The conversion is 1 Btu = 252 cal.

SPECIFIC HEAT (c)
The specific heat is the characteristic amount of heat that flows into a unit mass of a given substance and raises its temperature by 1°. For solids and liquids, heat is transferred under constant atmospheric pressure.

HEAT CAPACITY (C)
Heat capacity is the total amount of heat needed to produce a degree rise in temperature.

CALORIMETRY
Calorimetry is the experimental measurements of specific heats and other heat constants.

HEAT OF FUSION (Lf)
Heat of fusion is the amount of heat added to melt each unit mass of substance at the melting point (under normal atmospheric pressure).

HEAT OF VAPORIZATION (Lv)
Heat of vaporization is the amount of heat added to vaporize each unit mass of substance at the boiling point (under normal atmospheric pressure).

HEAT OF SUBLIMATION (Ls)
Heat of sublimation is the amount of heat added to sublimate each unit mass of substance at the sublimation point (under normal atmospheric pressure).

P-T DIAGRAM
The P-T diagram keeps track of phase changes. For a pure substance the diagram will resemble the following.

EVAPORATION
Evaporation takes place at the surface of the liquid in contact with a gas at a given pressure. At temperatures well below the boiling point, molecules from the liquid that are particularly energetic can break free and rise above the liquid to form a vapor. The evaporating molecules take away the thermal energy with them—on average the amount of energy per unit mass is the same order of magnitude as the heat of vaporization for boiling. Thus the evaporation process removes heat from the liquid, cooling it and anything in contact with it.

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December 21, 2022 – 10:34 AM Categories: Physics | Post a comment

JUDAISM: Meaning in Messianism

Reference: Judaism

[NOTE: In color are Vinaire’s comments.]

Whether we read it in its Jewish, its Christian, its secular, or its heretical version, the underlying messianic theme has always been that of hope. 

Though the Jews were able to find their suffering meaningful, meaning for them did not end there. It climaxed in Messianism. 

We can work our way into this concept by way of an arresting fact. The idea of progress—belief that the conditions of life can improve, and that history can in this sense get somewhere—originated in the West. Insofar as other peoples have come to this notion, they have acquired it from the West.

The idea of progress—belief that the conditions of life can improve, and that history can in this sense get somewhere—originated in the West.

Striking as this fact is, it seems explicable. If we confine ourselves to the two other enduring civilizations—South Asian, centering in India, and East Asian, centering in China and its cultural offshoots—we find that their presiding outlooks were forged by people who were in power; in India these were the brahmins, and in China the literati. By contrast, the West’s outlook was decisively shaped in this matter by the Jews, who for most of their formative period were underdogs. Ruling classes may be satisfied with the status quo, but underdogs are not. Unless their spirits have been crushed, which the Jewish spirit never was, oppressed people hope for improvement. This hope gave the biblical Jews a forward and upward looking cast of mind. They were an expectant people—a people who were waiting, if not to throw off the yoke of the oppressor, then to cross over into the promised land.

The West’s outlook was decisively shaped in this matter by the Jews, who for most of their formative period were underdogs. 

Sweet, sweet the open spreading fields
Lay decked in shining green;
So to the Jews fair Canaan stood,
While Jordan rolled between.

To sum up the matter: Underdogs have only one direction to look, and it was the upward tilt of the Jewish imagination that eventually led the West to conclude that the conditions of life as a whole might improve. 

Oppressed people hope for improvement. The Biblical Jews were waiting, if not to throw off the yoke of the oppressor, then to cross over into the promised land.

Hope has more purchase on the human heart when it is rendered concrete, so eventually Jewish hope came to be personified in the figure of a coming Messiah. Literally, Messiah (from the Hebrew mashiah) means “anointed”; but as kings and high priests were anointed with oil, the terms became a title of honor, signifying someone who had been elevated or “chosen.” During the Babylonian Exile the Jews began to hope for a redeemer who would effect the “ingathering of the exiles” to their native homeland. After the second destruction of the Temple (70 C.E.), the honorific title “Messiah” was used to designate the person who would rescue them from that diaspora. 

During the Babylonian Exile the Jews began to hope for a redeemer who would effect the “ingathering of the exiles” to their native homeland. 

Things, though, are never this simple, and in the course of time the messianic idea became complex. Its animating concept was always hope, and this hope always had two sides to it: the politico-national side (which foresaw the triumph of the Jews over their enemies and their elevation to a position of importance in world affairs), and a spiritual-universal side (in which their political triumph would be attended by a moral advance of worldwide proportions).

They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears
into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more. (Isaiah 2:4)

These three features of the messianic idea—hope, national restitution, and world upgrade—remained constant, but within this stable framework differing scenarios were scripted. 

The messianic idea had the stable framework of hope, national restitution, and world upgrade.

One important difference concerned the way the messianic age would arrive. Some expected an actual Messiah to appear—a priest or king who, as God’s deputy, would effect the new order. On the other side were those who thought God would dispense with a human agent and intervene directly. The latter view, appropriately called the messianic expectation, hoped for “an age in which there would be political freedom, moral perfection, and earthly bliss for the people of Israel in their own land, and also for the entire human race.” The first concept includes everything in the second, but adds the figure of a lofty and exalted political and spiritual human personality, who comes to prepare the world for the Almighty’s kingdom. 

It hoped for an age in which there would be political freedom, moral perfection, and earthly bliss for the people of Israel in their own land, and also for the entire human race.

A second tension reflected the restorative and utopian impulses within Judaism generally. Restorative Messianism looked for the recreation of past conditions, typically the Davidic monarchy but now idealized. Here hope turned backward to the reestablishment of an original state of things and to a “life lived with the ancestors.” But Messianism also accommodated Judaism’s forward-looking impulse, so there were versions that were utopian in envisioning a state of things that never before existed.

Restorative Messianism looked for the recreation of past conditions, typically the Davidic monarchy but now idealized. But Messianism also envisioned a state of things that never before existed.

Finally, Messianists differed concerning whether the new order would be continuous with previous history or would shake the world to its foundations and replace it (in the End of Days) with an aeon that was supernaturally different in kind. As the power of the Jews dwindled in the face of a rising Europe, and hope of political restoration in Israel seemed increasingly impossible, the expectation of a miraculous redemption strangled political yearnings. Apocalypticism, elements of which are visible in the prophets themselves, replaced hopes for military victory. The Messianic Age would break in at any moment, abruptly and cataclysmically. Mountains would crumble and the seas boil. The laws of nature would be abrogated to make way for a divine order that was unimaginable save that the “birth pangs of the Messianic Age”—its fearful images excited by terrors the Jews were actually experiencing—would be followed by peace. Thus even this apocalyptic version contained a utopian element. Peril and dread were balanced by consolation and redemption.

Finally, there was also an element of the Messianic Age breaking in at any moment, abruptly and cataclysmically, and to be followed by peace. 

In all three of these polarities the alternatives were deeply intertwined, while being contradictory by nature. The messianic idea crystallized and retained its vitality out of the tensions created by its ingredient opposites. Nowhere do we find a pure case of one without the other; only the proportions between them fluctuated, often wildly. The direction in which the pendulum swung was determined by historical events and the individual character of their proclaimers, a number of whom—the “false messiahs”—assumed the messianic title for themselves and in several instances attracted large followings. In periods when the Israelites were still living an independent political life in their own land, ethical perfection and earthly bliss were emphasized; whereas in periods of subjugation and exile the yearning for political freedom was more prominent. In times of national freedom the worldwide, universalistic part of the hope was basic; but in times of trouble and distress the nationalistic element came to the fore. Throughout, however, the political component went arm in arm with the ethical, and the nationalistic with the universal. Political and spiritual longings united, as did hopes for themselves and the world at large. Both themes figure in Zionism, the modern movement for political and spiritual renewal of the Jewish people, which helped the Jews return to Palestine and found the State of Israel in 1948.

Throughout, however, the political component went arm in arm with the ethical, and the nationalistic with the universal. Political and spiritual longings united, as did hopes for themselves and the world at large. 

So we return to the underlying messianic theme, which is hope. Moving into Christianity, it took the form of the Second Coming of Christ. In seventeenth—century Europe it surfaced as the idea of historical progress, and in the nineteenth century it assumed Marxist idiom in the vision of a coming classless society. But whether we read it in its Jewish, its Christian, its secular, or its heretical version, the underlying theme is the same. “There’s going to be a great day!” That says it prosaically. Martin Luther King, Jr., drawing his images from the Prophet Isaiah, said it rhetorically in his address to the audience of 200,000 in the 1968 civil rights March on Washington.

I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill
and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain,
and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord
shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

The underlying messianic theme has always been that of hope. 

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December 19, 2022 – 6:04 AM Categories: Religion | Post a comment

HINDUISM: The Stations of Life

Reference: Hinduism

Note: The original Text is provided below.
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People are different. The point of caste is the natural differences in dispositions that put people into classes as seers, administrators, producers, and followers. Insofar as caste has come to mean rigidity, exclusiveness, and undeserved privilege, Hindus today are working to clear the corruption from their polity.

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Summary

People are different. They occupy different stations in the social order. This brings us to the Hindu concept of caste. Caste contains both point and perversion. It emerged from the clash between the invading Aryan culture and the indigenous Indian culture during the second millennium B.C. The outcome was a society that was divided into four groups: seers, administrators, producers, and unskilled laborers.

A fifth group of outcastes , or untouchables, is looked upon as a perversion of the caste system as their lot through India’s history has been a wretched one. Many religious reformers have sought to remove untouchability from the caste system. Other perversions have been the proliferation of castes into subcastes, proscriptions against intermarriage and inter-dining, higher castes benefiting at the expense of the lower, and one remaining in the caste into which one was born.

But, in its basic format, the caste system recognizes that, with respect to the ways they can best contribute to society and develop their own potentialities, people fall into four groups:

(1) Brahmins or seers. Into their province fall the functions distributed among philosophers, artists, religious leaders, and teachers. Things of the mind and spirit are their raw materials. 

(2) Kshatriyas or administrators. They are born with a genius for orchestrating people and projects in ways that makes the most of available human talents.

(3) Vaishyas or producers. They are artisans and farmers, skillful in creating the material things on which life depends.

(4) Shudras or unskilled laborers. Such people are better off, and actually happier, working for others than being on their own.

Unequal castes were thus separated so the weak did not have to compete against the strong across the board. Within each caste there was equality, opportunity, and social insurance. 

Justice was defined as a state in which privileges were proportionate to responsibilities. The brahmins stood supreme in honor and psychological power, and the kshatriyas stood supreme In salary and social power, since they had responsibilities far beyond average at the cost of considerable self-sacrifice. The same offense elicited much higher punishment for those with higher responsibilities compared with those with lower responsibilities.

India considered Plato’s dream of the philosopher king unrealistic, and it is true that when brahmins assumed social power, they became corrupt. But it came in time to neglect Plato’s insight that the son could be of a different “caste” than his father.

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Comments

The caste system, as practiced today, contains many perversions; but the basic theses of caste continue to warrant attention.

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Original Text

People are different—we are back a third time to this cardinal Hindu tenet. We have traced its import for the different paths people should follow toward God, and the different patterns of life appropriate at various stages in the human career. We come now to its implications for the station the individual should occupy in the social order.

This brings us to the Hindu concept of caste. On no other score is Hinduism better known or more roundly denounced by the outside world. Caste contains both point and perversion. Everything in the discussion of this subject depends on our ability to distinguish between the two.

How caste arose is one of the confused topics of history. Central, certainly, was the fact that during the second millennium B.C. a host of Aryans possessing a different language, culture, and physiognomy (tall, fair-skinned, blue-eyed, straight-haired) migrated into India. The clash of differences that followed burgeoned the caste system, if it did not actually create it. The extent to which ethnic differences, color, trade guilds harboring professional secrets, sanitation restrictions between groups with different immunity systems, and magico-religious taboos concerning pollution and purification contributed to the pattern that emerged may never be fully unraveled. In any event the outcome was a society that was divided into four groups: seers, administrators, producers, and followers.

Let us record at once the perversions that entered in time, however they originated. To begin with, a fifth group—of outcastes or untouchables—appeared. Even in speaking of this category there are mitigating points to be remembered. In dealing with her lowest social group, India did not sink to slavery as have most civilizations; outcastes who in their fourth stage of life renounced the world for God were regarded as outside social classifications and were revered, even by the highest caste, the brahmins; from Buddha through Dayananda to Gandhi, many religious reformers sought to remove untouchability from the caste system; and contemporary India’s constitution outlaws the institution. Still, the outcaste’s lot through India’s history has been a wretched one and must be regarded as the basic perversion the caste system succumbed to. A second deterioration lay in the proliferation of castes into subcastes, of which there are today over three thousand. Third, proscriptions against intermarriage and inter-dining came to complicate social intercourse enormously. Fourth, privileges entered the system, with higher castes benefiting at the expense of the lower. Finally, caste became hereditary. One remained in the caste into which one was born.

With these heavy counts against it, it may come as a surprise to find that there are contemporary Indians, thoroughly familiar with Western alternatives, who defend caste—not, to be sure, in its entirety, especially what it has become, but in its basic format. What lasting values could such a system possibly contain?

What is called for here is recognition that with respect to the ways they can best contribute to society and develop their own potentialities, people fall into four groups. (1) The first group India called brahmins or seers. Reflective, with a passion to understand and a keen intuitive grasp of the values that matter most in human life, these are civilization’s intellectual and spiritual leaders. Into their province fall the functions our more specialized society has distributed among philosophers, artists, religious leaders, and teachers; things of the mind and spirit are their raw materials. (2) The second group, the kshatriyas, are born administrators, with a genius for orchestrating people and projects in ways that makes the most of available human talents. (3) Others find their vocation as producers; they are artisans and farmers, skillful in creating the material things on which life depends. These are the vaishyas. (4) Finally, shudras, can be characterized as followers or servants. Unskilled laborers would be another name for them. These are people who, if they had to carve out a career for themselves, commit themselves to long periods of training, or go into business for themselves, would founder. Their attention spans are relatively short, which makes them unwilling to sacrifice a great deal in the way of present gains for the sake of future rewards. Under supervision, however, they are capable of hard work and devoted service. Such people are better off, and actually happier, working for others than being on their own. We, with our democratic and egalitarian sentiments, do not like to admit that there are such people, to which the orthodox Hindu replies: What you would like is not the point. The question is what people actually are.

Few contemporary Hindus defend the lengths to which India eventually went in keeping the castes distinct. Her proscriptions regulating intermarriage, inter-dining, and other forms of social contact made her, in her first prime minister’s wry assessment, “the least tolerant nation in social forms while the most tolerant in the realm of ideas.” Yet even here a certain point lies behind the accursed proliferations. That proscriptions against different castes drinking from the same source were especially firm suggests that differences in immunity to diseases may have played a part. The presiding reasons, however, were broader than this. Unless unequals are separated in some fashion, the weak must compete against the strong across the board and will stand no chance of winning anywhere. Between castes there was no equality, but within each caste the individual’s rights were safer than if he or she had been forced to fend alone in the world at large. Each caste was self-governing, and in trouble one could be sure of being tried by one’s peers. Within each caste there was equality, opportunity, and social insurance.

Inequalities between the castes themselves aimed for due compensation for services rendered. The well-being of society requires that some people assume, at the cost of considerable self-sacrifice, responsibilities far beyond average. While most young people will plunge early into marriage and employment, some must postpone those satisfactions for as much as a decade to prepare themselves for demanding vocations. The wage earner who checks out at five o’clock is through for the day; the employer must take home the ever-present insecurities of the entrepreneur, and often homework as well. The question is partly whether employers would be willing to shoulder their responsibilities without added compensation, but also whether it would be just to ask them to do so. India never confused democracy with egalitarianism. Justice was defined as a state in which privileges were proportionate to responsibilities. In salary and social power, therefore, the second caste, the administrators, rightly stood supreme; in honor and psychological power, the brahmins. But only (according to the ideal) because their responsibilities were proportionately greater. In precise reverse of the European doctrine that the king could do no wrong, the orthodox Hindu view came very near to holding that the shudras, the lowest caste, could do no wrong, its members being regarded as children from whom not much should be expected. Classical legal doctrine stipulated that for the same offense “the punishment of the Vaishya [producer] should be twice as heavy as that of the shudra, that of the kshatriya [administrator] twice as heavy again, and that of the brahmin twice or even four times as heavy again.” In India the lowest caste was exempt from many of the forms of probity and self-denial that the upper castes were held to. Its widows might remarry, and proscription against meat and alcohol were less exacting.

Stated in modern idiom, the ideal of caste emerges something like this: At the bottom of the social scale is a class of routineers—domestics, factory workers, and hired hands—who can put up with an unvaried round of duties but who, their self-discipline being marginal, must punch time clocks if they are to get in a day’s work, and who are little inclined to forego present gratification for the sake of long-term gains. Above them is a class of technicians. Artisans in preindustrial societies, in an industrial age they are the people who understand machines, repair them, and keep them running. Next comes the managerial class. In its political wing it includes party officials and elected representatives; in its military branch, officers and chiefs-of-staff; in its industrial arm, entrepreneurs, managers, board members, and chief executive officers.

If, however, society is to be not only complex but good, if it is to be wise and inspired as well as efficient, there must be above the administrators—in esteem but not in pay, for one of the defining marks of this class must lie in its indifference to wealth and power—a fourth class, which in our specialized society would include religious leaders, teachers, writers, and artists. Such people are rightly called seers in the literal sense of this word, for they are the eyes of the community. As the head (administrators) rests on the body (laborers and technicians), so the eyes are placed at the top of the head. Members of this class must possess enough willpower to counter the egoism and seductions that distort perception. They command respect because others recognize both their own incapacity for such restraint and the truth of what the seer tells them. It is as if the seer sees clearly what other types only suspect. But such vision is fragile; it yields sound discernments only when carefully protected. Needing leisure for unhurried reflection, the seer must be protected from over-involvement in the day-to-day exigencies that clutter and cloud the mind, as a navigator must be free from serving in the galley or stoking in the hold in order to track the stars to keep the ship on course. Above all, this final caste must be protected from temporal power. India considered Plato’s dream of the philosopher king unrealistic, and it is true that when brahmins assumed social power, they became corrupt. For temporal power subjects its wielder to pressures and temptations that to some extent refract judgment and distort it. The role of the seer is not to crack down but to counsel, not to drive but to guide. Like a compass needle, guarded that it may point, the brahmin is to ascertain, then indicate, the true north of life’s meaning and purpose, charting the way to civilization’s advance.

Caste, when it has decayed, is as offensive as any other corrupting corpse. Whatever its character at the start, it came in time to neglect Plato’s insight that “a golden parent may have a silver son, or a silver parent a golden son, and then there must be a change of rank; the son of the rich must descend, and the child of the artisan rise, in the social scale; for an oracle says ’that the state will come to an end if governed by a man of brass or iron.’” As one of the most thoughtful recent advocates of the basic idea of caste has written, “we may expect that the coming development will differ chiefly in permitting intermarriage and choice or change of occupation under certain conditions, though still recognizing the general desirability of marriage within the group and of following one’s parents’ calling.” Insofar as caste has come to mean rigidity, exclusiveness, and undeserved privilege, Hindus today are working to clear the corruption from their polity. But there remain many who believe that to the problem no country has yet solved, the problem of how society ought to be ordered to insure the maximum of fair play and creativity, the basic theses of caste continue to warrant attention.

Up to this point we have approached Hinduism in terms of its practical import. Beginning with its analysis of what people want, we have traced its suggestions concerning the ways these wants might be met and the responses appropriate to various stages and stations of human life. The remaining sections of this chapter shift the focus from practice to theory, indicating the principal philosophical concepts that rib the Hindu religion.

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December 18, 2022 – 9:12 AM Categories: Hinduism, Religion | Post a comment

Physics I: Chapter 14

Reference: Beginning Physics I

CHAPTER 14: FLUIDS IN MOTION (HYDRODYNAMICS)

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KEY WORD LIST

Viscosity, Viscous Forces, Non-Viscous Fluids, Turbulent Flow, Steady-State Flow, Laminar Flow, Flow Line, Streamline, Flow Tube (Stream Tube), Incompressible Fluid, Ideal Fluid, Equation of Continuity, Bernoulli’s Equation, Torricelli’s Theorem, Venturi Tubes, Stagnation Point, Aerodynamics, Coefficient Of Viscosity, Poiseuille’s Law, Stoke’s Law, Reynold’s Number

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GLOSSARY

For details on the following concepts, please consult CHAPTER 14.

VISCOSITY
In general, there are shear forces between layers of fluids that move past each other and between the moving fluids and boundary surfaces. This property of fluids is called viscosity.

VISCOUS FORCES
The shear forces of viscosity are frictional in nature. They are called viscous forces.

NON-VISCOUS FLUIDS
For some fluids the viscous forces can be quite small, especially when they are moving slowly. In such vases one can ignore viscosity. Such a fluid is known as a non-viscous fluid.

TURBULENT FLOW
Much fluid motion is quite complex, with the flow pattern at any given point changing over time. Such motion is called turbulent flow. Turbulent flow is characterized by swirling and eddies and constantly changing patterns of motion.

STEADY-STATE FLOW
In many cases, however, the flow pattern at any point stays the same from moment to moment. Such motion is called steady-state or just steady flow. It is also called laminar flow.

LAMINAR FLOW
See STEADY-STATE FLOW.

FLOW LINE
The flow line of a particle of water moving in a stream is the path it takes. In steady flow, any particle that is located on the flow line of a previous particle will repeat the motion of that particle.

STREAMLINE
The streamline of a flow is the flow pattern of the entire fluid at a given instant, retaining knowledge of the velocities of all the particles at that instant. In steady flow, the streamlines remain constant in time. For steady-state flow, two streamlines can never cross each other.

FLOW TUBE (STREAM TUBE)
A flow tube is made up of the streamlines that pass through the perimeter of a small cross-sectional area in steady state. The flowing fluid can never cross the boundary of the tube.

INCOMPRESSIBLE FLUID
For an incompressible fluidthe changes in the densities from location to location are so small that we can ignore them.

IDEAL FLUID
An incompressible fluid that has no viscosity is called an ideal fluid.

EQUATION OF CONTINUITY
The mass of fluid that flows into one end of the flow tube in a given time interval must be the same as the mass that flows out the other end in the same time interval.

BERNOULLI’S EQUATION

TORRICELLI’S THEOREM
If you have a container filled with fluid with small hole at the bottom of the container, the fluid leaves through the hole with velocity same as it would experience if dropped from the same height to the hole level.

VENTURI TUBES

(a) The pressure in the pipe is determined by observing the height of water in the tube.
(b) The tube acts like a open-tube manometer and measures the gage pressure of the flowing liquid.z
(c) The height difference of the mercury (corrected for the different heights of fluid above the mercury on the two sides) directly measures P2 — P1. This also yields velocity per P2 — P1 = ½ dv12.

STAGNATION POINT
The stagnation point is a small region or point right in front of the tube at 2 in figure (c) above, where the fluid is at rest since it must go around one or the other side of the tube.

AERODYNAMICS
An airplane in motion is supported by the pressure difference between the top and undersides of the wing. Compression of the streamlines above the wing means that the flow tube above the wing has a smaller cross-sectional area and, therefore, greater velocity of the air. This greater velocity implies lower pressure.

COEFFICIENT OF VISCOSITY
For fluid in steady flow between parallel plates, the stress is proportional to the velocity gradient, where the coefficient of viscosity  is the proportionality constant,

POISEUILLE’S LAW
The volume flow rate depends on the fourth power of the radius of the pipe, as well as on the change in pressure per unit length along the pipe.

STOKE’S LAW
When an object moves through a viscous fluid in such a way that the fluid is in steady flow past it, the viscous forces on the object are, to a good approximation, proportional to the relative velocity and the coefficient of viscosity. The expression for the force will vary with the shape of the object. For sphere,

REYNOLD’S NUMBER

The Reynold’s number is a dimensionless quantity that depends on four factors: the density d of the flowing fluid, the coefficient of viscosity , the average relative velocity of the fluid v, and the characteristic linear dimension L of the solid boundary. For flow through a pipe, L is the diameter of the pipe. For an object moving through a fluid, L can be taken as some average linear dimension of the object facing into the fluid flow. In all cases the expression for the Reynold’s number is

When R exceeds a certain value for the geometry at hand, the flow turns from steady to turbulent. A good rule of thumb for fluids flowing through a pipe is that when R exceeds 2000, the flow becomes turbulent. Similarly for a sphere moving through a fluid, the critical value of R is about 10.

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December 17, 2022 – 6:37 PM Categories: Science | Post a comment