Authors: Abhishek Majhi, Ramkumar Radhakrishnan
In course of the development of modern science, inadequacy of classical logic and Eastern philosophy have generally been associated only with quantum mechanics in particular, notably by Schroedinger, Finkelstein and Zeilinger among others. Our motive is to showcase a deviation from this prototypical association. So, we consider the equation of motion of a classical harmonic oscillator, and demonstrate how our habit of writing the general solution, by applying the principle of superposition, can not be explained by remaining within the bounds of classical logic. The law of identity gets violated. The law of non-contradiction and the law of excluded middle fail to hold strictly throughout the whole process of reasoning consequently leading to a decision problem where we can not decide whether these two `laws' hold or not. We discuss how we, by habit, apply our intuition to write down the general solution. Such intuitive steps of reasoning, if formalized in terms of propositions, result in a manifestation of the inadequacy of classical logic. In view of our discussion, we conclude that the middle way ({\it Mulamadhyamakakarika}), a feature of Eastern philosophy, founds the basis of human reasoning. The essence of the middle way can be realized through self-inquiry ({\it Atmavichar}), another crucial feature of Eastern philosophy, which however is exemplified by our exposition of the concerned problem. From the Western point of view, our work showcases an example of Hilbert's axiomatic approach to deal with the principle of superposition in the context of the classical harmonic oscillator. In the process, it becomes a manifestation of Brouwer's views concerning the role of intuition in human reasoning and inadequacy of classical logic which were very much influenced by, if not founded upon, Eastern philosophy.
Comments: 14 Pages.
Download: PDF
[v1] 2022-02-10 05:15:18
Unique-IP document downloads: 246 times
Vixra.org is a pre-print repository rather than a journal. Articles hosted may not yet have been verified by peer-review and should be treated as preliminary. In particular, anything that appears to include financial or legal advice or proposed medical treatments should be treated with due caution. Vixra.org will not be responsible for any consequences of actions that result from any form of use of any documents on this website.
Add your own feedback and questions here:
You are equally welcome to be positive or negative about any paper but please be polite. If you are being critical you must mention at least one specific error, otherwise your comment will be deleted as unhelpful.