"Taking a contrary view," said O. D. Chandrasekhar, who was here in Cleveland all the way from Bombay, India, and didn't say much, but when he did, nobody could figure out what he meant, "this null result may as easily be read as proving the existence of the Æther. Nothing is there, yet light travels. The absence of a light-bearing medium is the emptiness of what my religion calls akasa, which is the ground or basis of all that we imagine 'exists.'"
* * * * * * * * * *
"Chandrasekhar"
According to Wikipedia, "the name comes from the name of an incarnation of the Hindu god Shiva. In this form he married the god Parvati." But Shiva had over 10,000 names so that's probably meaningless. I have convinced myself it is meaningless so that I don't have to learn all about Shiva to provide some context to a man named after one of his incarnations. The literal meaning in Sanskrit of "chandra" is "moon" and "sekhar" is "crown". That's probably more to the point although what that point is is anybody else's guess because my guess might sound a bit insensitive: Chandrasekhar is king of the moon. Luna is the root word of lunacy. Chandrasekhar is the king of the insane. Which could be where Pynchon was going with this since Pynchon points out that whenever he speaks, nobody understands him. Plus "OD" is something that sometimes happens when you take too many drugs. But when you take just the right amount of drugs, you could sound crazy to sober people.
"Taking a contrary view"
You would think the view contrary to Roswell Bounce's view might be that discovering Æther doesn't exist doesn't leave them in a quandary about where to go next but leads them directly to where they should head. But you'd be wrong. Because O. D. here has decided that by proving Æther doesn't exist, Michelson and Morely have merely proved that it does.
"didn't say much, but when he did, nobody could figure out what he meant"
A few ways to interpret this description of old Chandrasekhar's explications of things.
First, the things Chandrasekhar says are complete nonsense. He sounds crazy. He rambles and speculates in a non-logical manner.
Second, he's much smarter than everybody else. His ruminations pass above the mental acuity of those listening to him. He is logical and rational in his thought but he is not comprehended by the drunk dimwits at his table.
Third, Chandrasekhar comes from a foreign place, not just in geography but in ways of seeing, believing, and expressing the world. His Hindu background allows him to understand the world in a way that is so outside the thinking of the Americans at his table that they simply can't follow his train of thought. This, to me, seems the most logical. Partly because Pynchon is always interested in how imperialism silences views that fail to see the world in a Eurocentric way. But also because I read Chandrasekhar's contrary opinion, read the definition of "akasa", and my mind refused to understand it because it's clogged with Western European assumptions.
"this null result may as easily be read as proving the existence of the Æther"
I mean, it doesn't. But it also doesn't disprove the existence of Æther! It strongly suggested that Æther doesn't exist. The problem then, what with everybody still thinking light was merely another wave that needed a medium for its propagation across space, was that the experiment did not suggest another alternative. Many clung to the idea that it must still exist because their ideas on how light traveled were now untethered. They had no theory to explain it. So maybe, since light still travels somehow, the experiment, um, proved Æther existed? No, no. Let's hear O. D. out a little more for his explanation of how this contrary opinion makes sense.
"Nothing is there, yet light travels"
Right. This is the observation that has broken so many minds! So you either figure out how light travels without the Æther, or you cling to your quickly dying theory (as many scientists will do for another half century, even after Einstein was all, "Here's how it probably works and I didn't need to fudge any numbers with a non-existent, invisible space goo!"
"The absence of a light-bearing medium is the emptiness of what my religion calls akasa, which is the ground or basis of all that we imagine 'exists.'"
Ouch my brain.
Before trying to untangle Chandrasekhar's comment, I'd like to return to an important part of the death of Æther theory that I've discussed somewhat previously: how and why special relativity usurped it and why that's important to this novel. One of the concerns with Æther and how light and matter traveled through it was determining a standard frame of reference. As a metaphor, we can view this as Western Civilization trying to force their view of things on everybody else. But special relativity posited that measurements differ based on the observer's velocity and position. Note that special relativity doesn't change the facts which the observer's observe: it just creates a different equation to determine equal outcomes from each different point of view. Again, metaphorically, we have different cultures viewing the same historic events but interpreting them in different ways, even if the event still just happened one specific way (if it could be seen by an unbiased neutral observer). Does that make sense? Because it needs to make sense because what we're about to delve into is Chandrasekhar's observation of the Michelson-Morley experiment from a relativistic non-Western point of view. Or should I say, my poor attempt to explicate it?
Let's start slowly.
"akasa"
Wikipedia has multiple definitions of ākāśa (or akasha) but I'll stick with the one that feels important in this context: how it's defined in Buddhist philosophy. I know, I know. Is Chandrasekhar Hindu or Buddhist? Does that matter? Am I the wrong person to discuss this? I can't answer two of those questions so we'll just ignore them all and plow ahead.
Wikipedia states that ākāśa has two primary meanings (which I'll quote from the article below):
The first meaning: "Spatiality: Ākāśa is defined as the absence that delimits forms. Like the empty space within a door frame, it is an emptiness that is shaped and defined by the material surrounding it." Light's ability to travel is like the door frame shaping the emptiness. The emptiness provides the passage; the door frame merely a sign that the passage exists. Nothing, in its way, can be something. And so the null result of the Michelson-Morley experiment simply points to the passage which light uses to move through space.
The second meaning: "Vast Space: Ākāśa is also described as the absence of obstruction . . . because it remains unchanged over time. In this sense, it is likened to the Western concept of ether—an immaterial, luminous fluid. . . ." So, what we'd expect. It is the same as Æther but, as in the first meaning, it is also nothing. A null result only proves it exists.
"the ground or basis of all that we imagine 'exists.'"
Here we get reference to the Hindu concept of "akasha": it is the "basis and essence of all things in the material world." But the word in this sentence that strikes me is "imagine" (with exists following in quotation marks also being important!). Here we sense one of the themes I've been discussing throughout: the general consensus of reality makes reality in the novel. How people imagine the way the world is is the way the world is. If it can be imagined, it exists. So even if an experiment proves that Æther doesn't exist in 1887, it doesn't mean it's dead and done for. People still believe in it, even if fewer and fewer will as time goes by. And again, speaking of faith, we see in this loss of faith in Æther the same loss of faith in God (as well as many other things which Pynchon will probably get to (and which I might be able to speak on if only I'd read this novel one time through before writing about it)).
There's probably more here that I'm not ferreting out (and probably a bunch of speculation that I got wrong) but I'll leave it at that for now.
