Old wine in new bottle

OLD WINE IN NEW BOTTLE

The following narration is a small story which I have read as a prescribed lesson in my II or III class. I am very much fascinated by the wisdom it contains and always cherish its recollection. That story I will present below together with its relevance to modern times as I feel and understand.

The story is as follows:

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There were four brothers long  back. It was the period when kings were ruling.

 Of the four brothers, the first one is adept in restricting the scattered bones of any animal or human to its skeleton. The second brother is capable of infusing blood and flesh into it. The third brother can breathe life into the structure life. As usual despite their knowledge and abilities they are poor. We know Goddess Saraswati and Goddess Lakshmi are daughter-in-law and mother-in-law and they can not stand each other and can not stay together.  So the brothers wanted to exhibit their skills before the king of the day and get rewarded by him. 

Their fourth brother is a fit for nothing fellow. He is neither knowledgeable nor adept in any skill as his other three brothers. So when the brothers  started for the capital to meet the king the fourth brother also desired to go with them But the others refused saying you are fit for nothing fellow why should you come at all. But the fourth brother pleaded with them volunteering to carry their luggage and requested them to allow him to accompany them. They reluctantly agreed.

As was the normal practice those days, all of them started by foot to reach the capital. They had to pass through a thick forest on the way.  While they are proceeding through the forest, the brothers saw the remains of an animal. The first brother recognized them to be of a lion. The three brothers have got inspired by its sight and wanted to exhibit their skill of bringing it back to life.

The fourth brother was dead against it. He told them: “Brothers, lion is a cruel animal and once you give it life, it will pounce on us and kill us. But the three brothers laughed away his statement as fear of an innocent fellow and said that when they gave life to it, it will never harm them.

But the fourth brother is not convinced. He said he will climb a tree and they can proceed with their unwise act. The fourth brother climbed a tree a bit away.

The first brother arranged the remains of the lion as its skeleton. The second brother infused blood and flesh into it. The third brother breathed life into it. And the lion got life and rose. As it has not taken any thing for many days and is hungry it pounced upon the three brothers and devoured them.

The fourth brother watching all this from the tree was very sad not only for the death of his brothers but also for the lack of common sense and wisdom in his brothers. He returned back to his village as a shattered man.

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Even though I am a student and teacher of physics, and myself am engaged in scientific research, somehow I am not much enthused with the attempts of the scientists who are currently trying to created conditions of situation just before Big Bang at CERN at the borders of Switzerland and France near Geneva. 

There is a Large Hadron Collider facility spread over 27 KM underground to conduct this experiment. A week back they have successfully conducted the first part by making high energy protons travel in opposite directions. They are looking for the generation of Higgs boson, the building block of matter. The next experiment is to make them collide. Presently the facility is down because of development of a snag. And it takes minimum two months for its repair. And now, in the proverbial way as digging mountain to catch the rat; this gigantic and most expensive experiment did not in any way end in knowing about the hadron or God’s particle; but just saying even not with certainty that neutrino is capable of moving faster than light. They could not know anything about big-bang theory or origin of the universe.

Somehow I feel is it necessary that we should conduct this sort of experiments? Not that I am afraid that the conduct of the experiment leads to a catastrophe. But no one really knows what happens after the conduct of the experiment. They are only enamored that they understand the conditions before Big Bang clearly. The origin of the universe is zillions and zillions of years old.  And that could not be known even remotely with this experiment.

And the study of theories of modern cosmology sound as mythical as our mythological stories. No one clearly knows what is what. We respect modern physicists and cosmologists who proposed those theories and they are more confusing than clear.

Should we know every thing about everything? I know that this is not in the spirit of science or furthering of knowledge. Can not we curb our thirst for knowledge?  I do not know.

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