How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
[Mr. Kumar to Pi:] "When I was your age, I lived in bed, racked with polio. I asked myself every day, 'Where is God? Where is God? Where is God?' God never came. It wasn't God who saved me – it was medicine. Reason is my prophet and it tells me that as a watch stops, so we die. It's the end. If the watch doesn't work properly, it must be fixed here and now by us. One day we will take hold of the means of production and there will be justice on earth." (1.7.16)
Mr. Kumar shares – quite openly – his personal story. The story perhaps helps Pi to see why Mr. Kumar attaches himself so fiercely to science. Science saved him from polio, not God. If we want to improve our lot on earth, we need to use tools of this earth: science and reason, not divine revelation. Even though Pi must disagree with Mr. Kumar, he still takes some of it to heart. During his ordeal on the ocean Pi says, "Survival had to start with me. In my experience, a castaway's worst mistake is to hope too much and do too little. [...]. To look out with idle hope is tantamount to dreaming one's life away." (see Themes: Spirituality 2.58.9)
Quote #8
His name was Satish Kumar. These are common names in Tamil Nadu, so the coincidence is not so remarkable. Still, it pleased me that this pious baker, as plain as a shadow and of solid health, and the Communist biology teacher and science devotee, the walking mountain on stilts, sadly afflicted with polio in his childhood, carried the same name. [...]. Mr. and Mr. Kumar were the prophets of my Indian youth. (1.20.2)
In yet another example where Pi equates religion and science, the biology teacher and the Muslim holy man have the same name. Why is it wondrous and unexpected for an Indian boy from Tamil Nadu to have a Muslim and a biologist as the prophets of his youth? Is there anything odd about that? Shouldn't Pi at least have a Hindu teacher as one of his prophets?
Quote #9
[Mr. Okamoto:] "Your island is botanically impossible."
[Pi:] "Said the fly just before landing in the Venus flytrap."
[Mr. Okamoto:] "Why has no one else come upon it?"
[Pi:] "It's a big ocean crossed by busy ships. I went slowly, observing much."
[Mr. Okamoto:] "No scientist would believe you."
[Pi:] "These would be the same who dismissed Copernicus and Darwin. Have scientists finished coming upon new plants? In the Amazon basin, for example?" (3.99.51-56)
To Pi, Mr. Okamoto and Mr. Chiba have a limited view of science. The Japanese investigators think that science's method of rational inquiry discredits the miraculous. However, Pi thinks of science differently. He sees science as yet another gateway to the wondrous and miraculous. Perhaps it's not so hard to see his point. When Copernicus removed the earth from the celestial center of the universe, people must have been shocked. Because science brings us to new and undiscovered things, Pi's thinks science encourages our faith in the "hard to believe" (see Themes: Spirituality 3.99.109-113).