Chapter 8 Summary and Analysis

Mukunda claims that J.C. Bose, a noted botanist, was the first to invent a wireless "coherer" and an instrument for indicating the refraction of electric waves. Bose, a Cambridge graduate, tells Mukunda that westerners are interested in his demonstrations of the "indivisible unity of all life." Bose's invention, the crescograph, detects the energy around plants and indicates a sensitive nervous system that registers love, hate, pleasure pain, joy fear and other appropriate response to stimuli.

Mukunda later attends the opening ceremonies of the Bose Institute, and listens to Bose refer to the center as not only a laboratory but also a temple. Bose explains how he saw the lack of boundaries between physics and physiology in his experiments, and how inorganic matter was anything but inert. Ultimately, what he realized is that everything is made of different arrangements of the...