[Long Read] Review: Michio Kaku's Latest Is A Tour You Should Definitely Go On

To science enthusiasts, Michio Kaku needs no introduction. He is that physicist of our generation who has contributed profoundly and originally to the field of cutting-edge theoretical physics and also the one who has explained to non-physicists the most complicated of the exotic concepts of ‘New Physics’ – from black holes to multiverses. In his latest book he takes the readers on a journey to one of the ultimate quests of physics – the quest for ‘God Equation’.

What is this ‘God Equation’?

The book provides a grand tour through the best brains of human species working on some of the ever-enduring questions contemplated. It is a tour every human being with a love for finer and deeper aspects of life should take.

One wonders how modern debates in physics today can be seen in the light of the atomic concepts of ancient Hindu Darshanas, particularly Vaiseshika and Nyaya.

As the propagation of electromagnetic waves is discussed, an Indian will remember Jagadish Chandra Bose demonstrating the use of radio waves propagation two years before Marconi. Peripheral to the book, a mention could have been an interesting tidbit.

Kaku shows how both general and special theories of relativity play a role in the way GPS works. The computer in the cellphone takes three of the 31 GPS-system related satellites orbiting the planet. The time for and hence the clocks, of the satellites moving at roughly 17,000 miles per hour run slower than their earthen counterparts. On the other-hand being away from terrestrial gravity time speeds up a bit. The former because of special and latter because of general theories of relativity. ‘Your cell phone then factors in both competing effects and tells you precisely where you are located’ writes Kaku: ‘So without special and general relativity working in tandem, you would be lost.’ (pp. 48-49)

Inside the book we also read how Max Planck spoke to Hitler in his own mild-mannered way, against the exodus of the scientists because of antisemitism, while his own son who plotted to murder Hitler was executed.

Max Delbruck, one of the principal scientists spearheading the early important explorations of molecular biology has told how Bohr insisted that ‘one could look at a living organism either as a living organism or as a jumble of molecules; one could do either, one could make observations that tell where the molecules are, or … tell you how the animal behaves, but there might well exist a mutually exclusive feature, analogous to the one found in atomic physics.’ Though peripheral to the book, this actually shows how deep was the impact that the developing worldviews in new physics held for other sciences.

But then in the book as such there is no mysticism. It is pure science.

In the sixth chapter we come to the string theory.

One of the very important features of string theory is ‘how gravity is necessarily included’ in it. Gravity beautifully fits into string theory as 'graviton emerges as one of the lowest vibrations of the string'. Theoretical physicist Edward Witten regards it was a mere historical accident that general relativity predated string theory. To him in another planet it might have been the reverse. Kaku echoes Witten:

Apart from the 10-dimensional strings, there is also the M-theory – discovered by physicist Edward Witten, with a hidden eleventh dimension and which was based on membranes rather than strings. An eleven-dimensional sphere can collapse in five ways into ten-dimensional strings.

The critics of String theory compare it with Vortex theory, a famous mathematical model used to describe the atoms in the late 19th century which had the support of many famous physicists. But later with the discovery of sub-atomic particles it was abandoned.

Perhaps it is time for us to look at reality through the three aspects we see every day under our national television logo– Satyam, Sivam, Sundaram: Empirical validity, Goodness and Beauty.

Then comes beauty. Search for these three in any theory in this order can be a good guiding principle. In the words of Kaku: ‘Physicists have realized only in the last few decades that symmetry, instead of being just a pleasing feature of a theory, is actually the central ingredient.’ (p. 147)

Though beautiful, Kaku points out that 'a purely mathematical term in an equation from physics' can hardly be equated to such values. Equations of the universe may not need to embed the values we have evolved to cherish. The values may not need validity and meaning from a theory of strings vibrating in multi-dimensions. But humans need a harmony in both. Can such a harmony be achieved by looking into the sacred accounts of the origins of the diverse religious systems?

For a Tamil Hindu, it is impossible, not to remember the lines from the famous Shaktic hymn Abirami Anthathi which describe the Divine Feminine as the ‘nothingness of space from which emerged all physical existence’:

Kaku harmonizes the 'Eastern’ and Abrahamic worldviews:

A more appropriate term is Avyakta – from both Shaktic and Jain traditions.

Jesuit anthropologist Pierre de Chardin who came from an entirely different tradition, too felt the submergence of the personal theological deity, however cosmic in imagination, in the oceanic Divine Feminine, validating the universality of the latter:

Thus the image of the eleven dimensional Oceanic Adi Shakti, Maha Maya, Dara Devi of the Buddhists, lost in the Western tradition as Assherah and Matronitthe, harmonizes the impersonal equations and the personal values which bring meaning to our day-to-day life and sustains the civilisation of our species.