Fritjof Capra

I am reading an account of Fritjof Capra's work and life in his own words, a part of the book called Uncommon Wisdom. He is also the author of the Tao of Physics, a bestseller on the similarities between Western concepts of Science and Eastern mysticism or spiritual thought.

According to him, the "theories" of everything that we take for granted (Newtonian Physics, Biological theories, or anything else we take as absolute truths) are actually approximations, because the nature of matter is not based on a firm, inviolable foundation. It is dynamic, and based on interrelationships between various parts. It keeps changing, and the patterns are what one can see and what we understand. But there is no single underlying theory that holds good under all circumstances.

There is a nice incident that he quotes about an argument between two of his acquaintances at a dinner table, with their spouses also sitting around the table. One of them, fed up about the argument that there is nothing in the world that can be called as an incontrovertible fact, said to his colleague, "Isn't it a fact that there are six people sitting at this table?" To which the other person replied, with a glance at his colleague's pregnant wife, "Who knows where one person ends and another begins?

Very intelligent, very enriching.