Ravi Gomatam

Ravi Veeraraghavan Gomatam (born January 1950, in Chennai, India) is the Director of the Bhaktivedanta Institute (Berkeley and Mumbai) and the newly formed Institute for Semantic Information Sciences and Technology (Berkeley and Mumbai). He is also Adjunct Professor at Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS), Pilani, Rajasthan, India.

Prof. R. Gomatam at Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen, June, 2011

Quotes

• As science went further and further into the external world, they ended up inside the atom where to their surprise they saw consciousness staring them in the face!
  • An interview with Ravi Gomatam by Thomas Beardy for Clarion Call magazine (Clarion University's newspaper)"Is There Consciousness Within Science?", 1990.

• Any high school boy or girl knows how to calculate the force with which a stone he or she throws will hit someone in the face, but nothing in those equations they use will tell them whether or not to throw it…To solve the problem of values we must know what is valuable. Consciousness is the most valuable commodity…To bring values into science, we need to connect science with what is valuable—consciousness.
  • An interview with Ravi Gomatam by Thomas Beardy for Clarion Call magazine (Clarion University's newspaper)"Is There Consciousness Within Science?", 1990.

• Scientific realism in classical (i.e. pre-quantum) physics has remained compatible with the naive realism of everyday thinking on the whole; whereas it has proven impossible to find any consistent way to visualize the world underlying quantum theory in terms of our pictures in the everyday world. The general conclusion is that in quantum theory naive realism, although necessary at the level of observations, fails at the microscopic level.
  • R.Gomatam's paper Physics and Commonsense - Reassessing the connection in the light of the quantum theory, 2004.

• Quantum physicists today are reconciled to randomness at the individual event level, but to expect causality to underlie statistical quantum phenomena is reasonable. Suppose a person shakes an ink pen such that ink spots are formed on a white wall, in what appears for all intents and purposes, randomly. Let us further suppose the random ink spots accumulate to form precise pictures of different known persons' faces every time. We will not regard the overall result to be a happenchance; we are apt to suspect there must be a "method" to the person who is shaking the ink pen.
  • R.Gomatam’s response to Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg's article "Einstein's Mistakes" published in Physics Today,Volume 59, Issue 4, Letters, October, 2005.

• The Schrödinger equation, which is at the heart of quantum theory, is applicable in principle to both microscopic and macroscopic regimes. Thus, it would seem that we already have in hand a non-classical theory of macroscopic dynamics, if only we can apply the Schrödinger equation to the macroscopic realm. However, this possibility has been largely ignored in the literature because the current statistical interpretation of quantum mechanics presumes the classicality of the observed macroscopic world to start with. But the Schrödinger equation does not support this presumption. The state of superposition never collapses under Schrödinger evolution.
  • Invited talk, delivered at the joint Indo-US Workshop on System of Systems Engineering, IIT-Kanpur, October 26-28, 2009.

• Two features of QT are commonly taken to be fundamentally non-classical: the absolute randomness of single events in the atomic regime, and the need for a permanent record of the experiment obtained using a macroscopic experimental arrangement…QT can also be applied to the larger system consisting of the original atomic system plus the macroscopic experimental arrangement. In this case, however, the larger system needs to interact with another stage of macroscopic recording. Since this procedure can continue ad infinitum, and is decisively terminated only when the result of an experiment is interpreted by a conscious observer, some noted quantum theorists have promoted the view that the quantum theory has some nexus with the consciousness of the observer...
  • Ravi Gomatam's paper "How do Classical and Quantum Probabilities Differ?", delivered at the conference on Foundations of Probabilities and Physics - 6 (FPP-6), Vaxjo, Sweden, June 13-17, 2011.

Quotes about Ravi Gomatam

• I was very interested in the talk by Dr. Ravi Gomatam… because he showed, by some nice arguments that the proper way to think of quantum mechanics is in terms of relationships… This is a new way of thinking, which is perhaps how we can get out of the confusions we seems to be in at present moment. It may be that this how we should be doing science.
  • Nobel Laureate in physics Prof. Brian Josephson, Plenary talk at “Quantum Approaches to Consciousness” organized by the University of Arizona at Flagstaff, August 1999

• In this sense, we agree with Gomatam (1999) who argues for a revision of our notion of macroscopic objects in accord with quantum non-separability. Indeed, the key to progress in quantum gravity may lie in a willingness to abandon stalwart concepts of dynamism such as energy, momentum, force, and even causation at the fundamental level of modeling.
  • Prof. M.W. Stuckey, NATO funded paper “Uniform Spaces in the Pregeometric Modeling of Quantum Non-Separability”, 2000

• I have benefited from… working with Ravi Gomatam on his ["Towards a Consciousness-Based, Realist Interpretation of Quantum Theory--Integrating Bohr and Einstein"](1998)
  • Prof. Edward Mackinnon (California State University) “From Quantum Mechanics to Quantum Field Theory”, p. 49, Notes, No 9, 2005

• However, many applied optimization problems have not been considered yet. It is necessary to use optimization methods of quantum and bio-molecular systems, because of the practical importance of the implementation of physical processes satisfying the required quality criteria. Most of the attention is focused on the following problems: … 2. Mathematical modeling of controlled physical and chemical processes in the brain; [to] consider the brain as a quantum macroscopic object (Gomatam, 1999).
  • pardalos,+Yatsenko,+R.+Gomatam&source=bl&ots=IiEca9ZLWP&sig=vMJ2gci-90CfIPE7WGZbggCzQwQ&hl=en&ei=yXZcTLLICYj6sAPKp4yqDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CBcQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=Gomatam&f=false Panos M. Pardalos and Vitaliy A. Yatsekno (Eds.), Optimization and Control of Bilinear Systems: Theory, Algorithms, and Applications, p. 208, Springer, New York (2008)

• Gomatam has proposed a new approach according to which quantum theory ought to use the terms ‘statistics’ or ‘probability’ to refer only to the occurrence of observable events and altogether renounce the notion of probabilities when talking about quantum ontological states.
  • Prof. B.V. Sreekantan, “Current Science”, journal of Indian Academy of Sciences, Vol.99, No9, November, p. 1268, 2010.

• Present an explanation of Gomatam's interpretation of Bohr's interpretation of quantum mechanics. You do not need to include your own interpretation of Bohr or evaluate whether Gomatam is getting Bohr's view correct. But you should articulate the conception of reality offered Gomatam's Bohr. In doing so, you should make clear whether Gomatam's Bohr solves the measurement problem and to what extent his account makes sense. Your paper should be approximately 1000-2500 words.
  • Prof. Douglas Kutach, Course on Quantum Mechanics, Brown University, 2010.

External links

• Ravi Gomatam's Appreciations
• Ravi Gomatam's blog "PostQuantum"
• R.Gomatam at the symposium Indo-US Workshop on Systems Engineering, October 26-28, 2009 (from official website of Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, India).