the compass chronicles. The gamblers of Kaliyuga

In the Indian epic Mahabharata, a minor king called Rituparna explains to his charioteer Nala how to count the leaves and fruits of an entire grove, just by looking at one twig. He boasts that he has gained this magical knowledge from the study of chance in gambling: “Knowledge I possess of the game of dice, thus is my skill in numbers.”

Many early cultures of the world allude similarly to the mathematical art of statistics. First a random sample is taken from the collection to be counted — five throws of dice in a game, or 20 random votes in an opinion poll. In some but not all methods, the sample is taken to represent the average distribution of the entire collection — such as apples in an orchard, red blood cells in the human bloodstream, or Jews in a certain precinct of Nazi Germany. The final count’s accuracy depends on the method used because the trick is in defining what ‘randomness’ consists of in a sample. But in the same way a telescope lets you observe faraway objects, statistics is the black art of counting from a distance.

On the other hand, systems that generate randomness (for example, dice in gambling) have also been interpreted as the expression of divine will. One of the most ancient of these occult systems is the I Ching, which claims that the 64 hexagrams in its deck are a microcosmic, combinatorial representation or sample of possibilities in the entire Chinese cosmos. A scholar of communication, Peter Zhang has noted that “The hexagrams of the I Ching are a predecessor of the binary system Leibniz reinvented. The undivided line, the yang, is the equivalent of one, and the divided line, the yin, is the equivalent of zero. In the digital age, the binary system is the hidden medium or milieu of our existence, the formal cause of our mode of being and manner of doing things. Probabilistic thinking is valorized all over again. Happenings tend to be grasped less in terms of linear causation, and more in terms of the fusion of chance and necessity.”

The statistician PC Mahalanobis traced the origin of qualitative statistical thinking in the Indian subcontinent to the Saptabhanginyaya or the ‘seven-fold’ system of logic attributed to Jain philosopher Bhadrabahu, who flourished in the 4th century BC. Just like the eight trigrams of I Ching which combine like chemical elements to form the complexity of 64 (8x8) hexagrams, Mahalanobis also pointed out that there might be a hypothetical eighth element in this Jain system of dialectic, designed “to rationalise and systematise what experience offers”. The Jains did not fail to point out that this logic had nothing to do with abstract, absolute truths (such as mathematical theorems) but were only based on lived reality — where there are no absolutes.

In Europe, the first enumeration of modern probabilistic methods is credited to Girolamo Cardano, an inveterate gambler and mathematician. It is an interesting contrast that in Jainism, probability emerged as a system of metaphysical reasoning about reality itself.

Certain modern views of neuroscience envisage the human brain or consciousness as a giant democratic assembly of neurons that vote to make decisions. The currently dominant paradigm of fundamental physics known as quantum mechanics was erected by Heisenberg, Pauli, Schrödinger and others, also based upon the principles of probability, its pillar being the Uncertainty Principle.

To see how this model is a typical feature of the world after the 20th century, here is a definition of ‘probability sample’: “A sample in which every unit in the population has a chance (greater than zero) of being selected in the sample.” In a sense, the very process of a pure democracy can be defined within sampling theory, and therefore the concepts of probability and chance. An election therefore is a sampling technique that represents the opinion of the entire population — for five years in the case of India. In democracy, as in spectator sports, Mindy Peden reminds us: “Chance is the great equalizer in the sense that all parties to the flirtation know... that anything could happen.”

According to Achal Oza, time in Hinduism is also like a game of chance: “...divided into four different yugas (ages). The names of these yugas come from a dice game popular in the Vedic period. These yugas are known as the Krita or Sat Yuga, Treta Yuga, Dvapara Yuga, and Kali Yuga. The Krita Yuga is named after the best roll and the Kali Yuga after the worst.” Therefore, if one looks at democracies as a game of chance, the smallest probability is that Kali Yuga will be rolled, but it exists no matter how small.

It is important for those who build their knowledge of the world on numbers, on statistical surveys and samples, and those who rule democracies, that given a limited set of choices, the output of such a system may not be a measure of the prevailing opinion, but only of the inherent uncertainty.

(Rohit Gupta explores the history of science as Compasswallah)

@fadesingh

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