At this point, it's better described as a "hypothesis" rather than a "theory".
And if it was proposed to "explain" those phenomena, it fails. I don't see how it "explains" anything. Applying new names or acronyms (e.g. PTC, UTC) to things which already have names (e.g. "thoughts") doesn't add any explanatory power. On the contrary, it muddles them. Instead of "thoughts" in a "mind" we have "(unnamed activity)" in a "Universal Thought Field" -- does that really help anything? Does it add any understanding? Does it allow us to make new predictions and test them?
(a) Thought is the subtlest emergent entity from the human brain.
This may be a translation problem, but I'd object to the choice of the word "subtlest" here. First because it's too vague, second because thought is rather obvious, not subtle, and third, there could well be many "emergent entities from the human brain" which are below our level of notice entirely and thus much more "subtle" than thought itself. Perhaps "enigmatic" would be a better choice.
As of now, though it is taken to arise from complex biochemical (neuronal) processes in the brain, we have no means of detecting any physical aspect of thought.
Rather misleading. We have many means of "detecting physical aspects of thought", including PET scans which monitor characteristic brain activity as people think various types of thought. Now whether that's the actual thought in action, or the alleged material "link" to the UTC/PTC, it's still a "physical aspect" of the thought process, and it can indeed be detected.
(b) All sensory experiences (light, sound, smell, taste, sound) result from an interaction between an external agent (photon, phonon, etc.) and some aspect of the brain.
Er, not really. The described interaction takes place outside the brain itself, in organs (eyes, ears, etc.) which convert -- in perfectly understandable physical and chemical ways (i.e., materially) -- the effects of sound or light or touch or chemicals (taste/smell) into coded nerve impulses. *Those* (the nerve impulses) are the agents which actually trigger thought and sensations when they are transmitted into "some aspect of the brain".
HYPOTHESIS: (a) It is proposed that, like the electromagnetic field, there is an extremely subtle substratum pervading the universe which may be called the universal thought field (UTF).
And what "triggered" this proposal? Why postulate that a "field" is involved, as opposed to any number of other things? And why does the author postulate that it "pervades" the universe (as opposed to say, is present only in the vicinity of "field generators" like brains)? He tries to analogize to electromagnetic fields and so on, but those do not "pervade" the universe either.
This may even be trans-physical, i.e., something that cannot be detected by ordinary physical instruments. Or it may be physical and has not yet been detected as such.
What sort of "explanatory theory" is this which can't even nail down its hypothetical "field" that much?
Furthermore, he says that if it's "transphysical" that it "cannot be detected by ordinary physical instruments". As opposed to what, extraordinary ones? Is he saying that this "field" is truly beyond any physical detection, or not? If it is, then how does the physical brain interact with it? If not, what makes it "transphysical" after all?
The author seems to invoke a lot of buzzwords without a clear idea of what he means when he uses them. He needs to clarify his words and ideas (to himself first, I'd say) a *lot* more before he can claim to have a "theory", or even a "hypothesis" -- so far he's just in the realm of "imprecise idea".
(b) Every thought generated in the brain creates its own particular thought field (PTF).
If he's going to propose being quantitative like that, he needs to *be* quantitative, and he's not. So there's a one-to-one correspondence between "PTF" and a "thought", eh? I'd sure like to see him try to define "thought" to the point where this might be, you know, testable. How many "thoughts" in the Gettysburg Address, for example? Does that trigger one PTF or dozens? If one, is it a "bigger" PTF than the PTF generated by the thought, "Jack slept"? If dozens, how many exactly? And how do they remain "linked" into a speech with a coherent theme?
And if thoughts "create" a PTF which goes floating around in the UTF, why do we need a UTF or PTF to explain anything at all? He already admits the thought pre-exists before the PTF gets spawned by it. He's not explaining thoughts by postulating a PTF, since his model is that *first* the thought exists in the brain, and *then* a PTF results from it.
Does this "explanatory" idea really "explain" anything?
Theory based on the above hypotheses:
It's all hypothesis at this point. Someday, if it gets enough supporting evidence and research results, *then* it would be a theory.
(a) Just as EM waves require the complex structure of the brain to be transduced into the experience of light and color, the UTF requires the complex system of the human brain to create local thoughts. In other words, when the UTF interacts with certain regions of the brain, thoughts arise as by-products.
Wait a minute, in the last paragraph he said that thoughts in the brain make a PTF, which is some sort of (quite unspecified) entity in the UTF, now he's turning around and saying that the UTF (in a manner unspecified -- PTF again, or something else?) triggers thoughts in the brain as well. It appears the brain, capable of forming its own thoughts on its own (but spawning PTFs thereby into the UTF as a byproduct) can also have thoughts "suggested" by disturbances in the UTF -- but the thoughts are still *in* the brain.
(b) Interactions between PTFs and brains generate other PTFs.
And the effect of all this PTF jostling is purported to be what, exactly? And more to the point, *how*?
Indeed every thought is a different reaction-result to either the UTF or to a PTF.
How exactly did the thought, "ouch, I've cut my finger" happen to get into the UTF in the first place so that I could eventually "receive" that thought from the UTF, if "indeed every thought" is a "reaction-result" to the UTF/PTF?
According to Raman, a thought has to be in a mind in the first place before it can spawn a PTF into the UTF. But if "every thought" is sourced from the PTF/UTF "field", how do any of them get there to start with (*especially* those which deal with physical, local events like "I've cut my finger", or "I wonder why the dog's barking").
Raman's notion needs work. A *lot* of work.
(c) There is an important difference between UTF and PTF.
Fascinating.
UTF does not require a material medium for acting upon a brain.
Because? How did Raman come to this "conclusion"?
But a PTF cannot be transmitted from one brain to another without a material medium, such as sound, writing, signs, etc.
Then there's a perfectly good pre-existing word for what Raman wants to relabel as "PTF". It's called "information".
(d) In some instances, as with molecular resonance,
Oh look, another unsupported physics analogy.
certain brains are able to resonate with the UTF in various universal modes.
Perhaps he would care to define the words "resonate" and "universal modes" (as well as enumerate the "various" ones to which he alludes) as he chooses to use them here.
"Resonate" has a very clear and unambiguous technical meaning. If that's what Raman means, he needs to describe what exactly is resonating with what, and how. If not, he needs to pick a better word, or define a new one instead of misleading the reader by using a word for another sort of pheonomenon entirely.
Such resonances constitute revelations,
How, exactly? There's that pesky "explanatory" requirement again. Just saying "you resonated and that's where your revelation originated" doesn't actually explain squat.
magnificent epic poetry, great musical compositions, discovery of a mathematical theorem in a dream, and the like, as also mystic experiences.
Yadda yadda.
What does Raman have against the notion of thinking the mundane way , without "resonating" with a "pervasive field"? How the brain processes its information isn't very well understood, of course, but at least there's the branch of science of information theory which shows that shuffling information (with no "fields" involved) can achieve some of the kinds of things the human brain does. It's not like we're at a complete loss to explain such things using current models. And nothing in the brain has looked like any kind of "field receptor", it's all made of neurons which, by gosh, seem to all be little information processors. We may not understand how they work in total aggregate, but any individual neuron takes nerve pulses in at the dendrites, and based on its current chemical threshold, does or does not trigger an outgoing pulse at the axon. Information processor, anyone?
(e) This perspective suggests that there can be no thought without a complex brain (well known fact);
So does the original perspective of the brain as an information processor, without any external "fields" involved.
and more importantly, that there exists a pure thought field (UTF) in the universe at large which may be responsible for the physical universe to be functioning in accordance with mathematically precise laws.
Then again, it "may" not be.
This appears to be empty speculation, without even an attempt to tie it to any "explanatory" analysis (much less procedural -- i.e. no process is offered by which these "fields" and "phenomena" supposedly operate).
And thus we get down to the meat of the issue: What testable predictions does this speculation make? What logical results would it have that would distinguish it from possible opposing ideas, which can be tested?
And just as importantly, how could it be falsified? What predictions does it make which can be put to trial, and if the results are found to be contrary to the predictions of the model, would disprove it?
ANALOGIES: The following parallels with other physical facts come to mind:
Danger, Will Robinson... Analogies are good for helping people understand something similar to the thing being explained, but are a poor substitute for actually defining your ideas explicitly in the first place. Raman hasn't even demonstrated that his "fields" even exist, much less that they do or do not work in any particular way. To drag in "analogies" now, when things may not even be at all like the things he compares them to, is very premature.
(a) Phosphorescence & luminescence: When radiation of shorter wavelengths falls on certain substances, the substances emit visible light immediately or after some time. Likewise when the UTF falls on a complex cerebral system, it emits thoughts of one kind or another.
"Emiting" light is a pretty simplistic process. Trying to obscure the complexities of "generating thought" by waving your hands and saying, "well, it's like emiting light", is irresponsible at best.
(b) One of the subtlest entities in the physical universe is the neutrino, which does not interact with ordinary matter through gravitation, strong, or electromagnetic interaction. Being involved only in the weak interaction, it is extremely difficult to detect it.
But it *can* still be detected.
The UTF is subtler by far than the neutrino,
And may be a lot more non-existent.
and may therefore (if it be purely physical) it may be far more difficult to detect.
Things that don't exist can be pretty hard to detect too. Is the author preparing his excuses in advance? "Well, if you haven't found it, you just haven't looked in the right way yet, no need to abandon my idea just yet..."
Final grade: Needs work.
Final grade: Flush mind after reading.
Prof. Raman's "On a Resonance Theory of Thought and Spirituality" is an extraordinarily compact and simple outline of a theoretical "picture" of the structure of consciousness regarded as a universal principle. A friend told me that the paper needed serious reworking because of its spareness of detail, ambiguity, and apparent lack of relevance to scientific questions. On the other hand, I don't imagine that Prof. Raman intended to write about a fully-fleshed-out theory, merely to indicate the general outline or form that some such future theory might take.
In his 1999 article, "The Nature of Man-Universe Connections," Hungarian astrophysicist Attila Grandpierre fleshed out the physical details of something that looks very much like Prof. Raman's general outline. For he, too, is interested in the problem of consciousness and its universality, and wonders what its physical structure might look like.
What Prof. Raman calls Universal Thought Field is, for Grandpierre, the ultimate vacuum field, the fundamental quantum field or substrate in the universe that generates all the other fields. Its preeminent quality is consciousness, intelligence, perception. It is thus, in a certain sense, "alive." Indeed, Grandpierre grounds the life principle in precisely this ultimate field, just as matter is subject to it because this "ultimate vacuum" is the source of all the physical fields that govern the behavior of matter. Similarly, it structures the psi-field (knowledge, intellect, perception, awareness, feeling -- consciousness, mind [which includes the unconscious]). Grandpierre is presenting a "picture," built up on present-day physics and astrophysics, which shows:
| ...that an organizing principle has to be at work at the origin of the solar system and at the ultraresonant interactions between the planets and the solar core. The developed-brain approach to the Universe indicated that there may exist an EM and quantum-vacuum coupling between Man and the Earth, Man and the Sun, Man and the Universe. Moreover, it is indicated that the Sun shows a fundamental openness and ultrasensitivity, which presents it as showing a fundamental life-phenomenon known as perception. Perception is an interaction in which a stimulus enters into the perceiver, which transforms it by its own (biopsychological) laws, selects the information by its own interpretation, and reacts to the selected, developing an answer which energetically is amplified in a 'cosmic' rate R = EÚin/EÚout > 10^10. What is the reason for this 'cosmic rate' amplification? I suggest that the reason is to amplify the information that is important to the Universe as a whole, since the higher rate at which it is amplified, the more easy to transfer it to other macrosystems for further information processing. In that sense the ultrasensitivity of living beings is a participation in a cosmic information processing. In this way we reached a cosmic interpretation of the most fundamental life phenomenon. |
This evokes Raman's suggestion of the inter-relationality of UTFs and PTFs (mutually responsive and co-acting) and between PTFs (ditto).
On the physical basis that Grandpierre presents -- and it is so extraordinarily detailed as to beyond the scope of this writing -- "one can construct the following chain of events for an interaction between the mind and brain":
| In the first step the information is contained and mediated by the vaccum field. These vaccum waves may interact with electromagnetic waves in giving them their information in the second step. The electromagnetic waves then may interact with the biomolecules of the brain, like sunshine interacts with chlorophyll molecules transferring the energy of the sunlight into chemical free energy. Form this available chemical energy the activation potentials of the neural networks are built up. Nevertheless, all four steps could be simultaneously influenced by the vacuum waves. The frequencies of the vacuum waves obtained here are remarkably close to the observed frequencies at cell divisions. This circumstance suggests that the way vacuum waves interact with material waves can be a resonant phenomenon. The vacuum waves may trasfer their energies and information content to material waves at the same frequencies. The real energy transfer could be necessary only at the onset of some material processes in an upper level of the mind. Here, I suggest a picture in which the different levels of our minds may work with progressively more subtle material carriers, while the deepest one works with vacuum waves without any net energy transfer taking place in the end, because the energy taken out from the vacuum may be put back by the brain itself when reading important information from the psi-field. It could be the reason why only living organisms with a significant free energy content are able to react on the basis of the information read-out. |
Grandpierre notes, "The different vacuum waves couple us in a different scale to the cosmos and to our bodies and brains, while the electromagnetic and electron waves present couplings between our environment, our brains, and local neural processes. These couplings to different scales of the outer world represent couplings between our different mind levels, simultaneously. In this context, it is important to note, that these outer sources of information -- the Earth, the Sun, the stars, and the Universe as a whole -- do show a whole range of generalized organic processes."
In the end, Grandpierre's essay calls urgent attention to problems involving the evolution of cosmic and biological consciousness. The picture that emerges is that "Man and Universe maintain multi-level, dynamic, direct connections." Which is hardly surprising, since physical science has said that the universe is constituted by various fields that structure the activity of their relevant particles. If this view is true, then Man participates in the universe at all levels of his being by virtue of his participation in all its active fields.
I'll conclude with Grandpierre's own summary of his article:
| Important evidences are presented that may serve for founding research into the cosmological evolution of cosmic and biological consciousness. A picture is outlined in which Man and Universe maintain multilevel, dynamic, direct connections. Not only the formation of the material of solar system is regulated by a cosmic organization activity, but there are cosmic fields like gravitational, electromagnetic, scalar-EM, Higgs, and scalar massless cosmic fields involved in the cosmic regulative processes. The cosmic biological and psychological effects influence significantly the biological and psychical, collective and individual organisational processes. The cosmic connections between Man and the Universe do not represent a one-sided action, but a mutual, meaningful, life-given interaction, in which Man is also an active participant.... |
In the end, the Universe is a singular, living thing constituted by an active organising factor, "which expresses an activity related to material 'objects,' but the substance of which does not exhaust in physical principles but extends towards much deeper realms of existence."
That is to say: To Mind; Will; Life; and (ultimately, on my speculation) Love.