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Now we have the new physics with quantum theory, which is no longer describing "reality." It is describing probable realities. The new physics looks for possible realities, and they are so elusive that no one model can exhaustively account for everything. The indeterminacy of models has replaced earlier certainties. Thus, it grows increasingly difficult to believe in an external world governed by mechanisms that science discloses once and for all. Thoughtful people find themselves with this very up-in-the-air kind of feeling regarding the most basic facts of life. Thus, it is now said that "we live in an age when anything is possible and nothing is certain." This is what some call the "post-modern dilemma."
Sigmund Freud also contributed to the undermining of certainty, especially religious certainty. He stated quite unequivocally that, "An illusion would be to suppose that what science would not give us, we can get elsewhere." Elsewhere, of course, refers to religion. And yet, his own psychoanalytic theory has become a matter of intense debate; has come under the critical scrutiny of the very scientific system he felt would validate his ideas.
This shift away from the study of the "outside" so-called objective world of nature to the "inner" subjective world of the observer, is a hallmark of the new science. As Heisenberg observed, "Even in science, the object of research is no longer nature itself, but man's investigation of nature." As an ancient writer observed, "There is nothing new except what is forgotten." Thus, Heisenberg's insight into the subjectivity of experience was already expressed in the Middle Ages by Thomas Aquinas who said: "Everything which is perceived is perceived in the manner of the perceiver." This is axiomatic; something most philosophers and psychologists take for granted. And yet, we tend to forget this truth; we reify our thoughts and desires, our presuppositions and attachments, and mistake it for a hard and fixed external reality. So, when Heisenberg just says the same thing all over again, it seems even more profound to us now. We think we are observing nature, but what we are observing is our own mind at work. We are observing our own methodology. The Buddha of course, said something quite similar long before Aquinas or Heisenberg. In the Avatamsaka Sutra, the Buddha said:
The mind is like an artist
It can paint an entire world...
If a person knows the workings of the mind
As it universally creates the world
This person then sees the Buddha
And understands the Buddha's true and actual nature. (Chap. 20)So, by the mid to late 20th century philosophers of science, like Thomas Kuhn, were beginning to question the notion of science as an objective progression towards truth. In his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), Kuhn observed that science, like religion, becomes heavily encumbered with its own baggage of non-rational procedures. Science much more than we are led to believe by its portrayal in textbooks, comes with its own set of presuppositions, of doctrines, and even heresies.
Kuhn essentially demolished this logical empiricist and purist view that science was the impartial progression towards a universal truth. Instead, he saw it as a series of "paradigms"—a global way of seeing things which is relatively immune from disconfirmation by experience—that were constantly being established and shifting back and forth. One paradigm would hold sway for awhile, only to be bumped out in a "revolution" by another conceptual world view. These paradigms were self-contained and self-perpetuating; they tended to conserve and perpetuate their own ideas, just like religion tends to conserve and perpetuate its own ideas. Everything seems steady and fixed until some revolutionary thinker comes along and causes a radical shift.
For example, Galileo, came out in the early 1600's and declared that Copernicus was correct: the earth moves, and the sun is the center of our galaxy. The Church denounced such views as heresies and dangerous to the faith. They forced Galileo to recant during a trial of the Inquisition. Although he was publicly compelled to affirm the existing scientific paradigm, Galileo still defied the authorities. After getting up from his knees, he is said to have mumbled "E pur si muove" (nevertheless it still moves). He was put under house arrest and lived out the rest of his life in seclusion. The world, of course, shifted paradigms to accept the new worldview. The Church, however, lagged behind, and only in 1992 lifted the 1616 ban on the Copernican teaching. Einstein, is another example. His theory of relativity at first was met with skepticism and doubt. So, at first the challengers to the entrenched paradigm are considered heretics. They are denounced; they are seen as quacks, as weirdoes. Finally, however, the evidence becomes overwhelming; their theories became the established dogma or doctrine and we go on until someone else shifts it again.
So, this is Kuhn's idea. I don't want to argue about whether Kuhn is correct or not, but merely point out that Kuhn, among others, has contributed to this feeling that science doesn't have the absolute answers. Thus modern science presents less of a unified front, less of an absolute bastion of truth. Certainly many people still see themselves as living in a black and white world, and that is probably true of the natural scientists.
While I was working on this paper, one of my natural science teachers said, "Well you know those quantum physicists; I mean, they are way out there, and everything is relative to them. But I will tell you that in my field, there are still biologists who put their necks on the line to say that everything is black and white. It's absolutely this way." And yet, in just the last few years, there has been a growing body of evidence in the biological sciences that hints at a major paradigm shift developing there as well.
In general, many scientists are coming to define their discipline in a more humble and tentative way. Science for people at the turn of the century was absolute, fixed truths and principles that held good forever and described the total nature of an absolute and unchanging reality, or a reality that was changing according to very predictable laws. Now a better working definition would be: "a form of inquiry into natural phenomena; a consensus of information held at any one time and all of which may be modified by new discoveries and new interpretations at any moment." In contemporary science, uncertainty seems to be the rule.
The science that my grandparents looked forward to would not be a science that they could recognize today, and not just because of theoretical ambiguities and uncertainties. Modern science has become something we look at with deep ambivalence; we love what it can do for us, yet dread what it can do to us. The scientifically "advanced" weapons of mass destruction of two world wars, the messing with nature in terms of environmental pollution, the experiments with human embryos, genetically engineered life, chemical-biological warfare—all have created a very strange climate now. This anxiety about "Prometheus unbound"—the unchecked power of science—makes us more alert to the need to somehow reconcile our facts and our values, our morals and our machines, or as it is often expressed, "science and spirituality." This contemporary longing makes Buddhism more rather than less attractive. People are even more drawn to Buddhism, especially in the West, because they see it as a spiritual teaching that can mesh with and mitigate modern science.
In this last part, I want to look at how close this relationship is between Buddhism and modern science. Initially, many thinkers, both Eastern and Western, heralded the coming age where Eastern religion and Western science would unite in a perfect marriage. D. T. Suzuki certainly thought this way (although later, as we shall see, he had a change of mind). The notable physicist Niels Bohr, as early as the 1940's, sensed this congruence between modern science and what he called "Eastern mysticism."
As he was looking into atomic physics and for a unified field of reality, he remarked, "This reminds me of Eastern religion." He said, "When searching for harmony in life, one must never forget that in the drama of existence we have both spectators and actors." Bohr, a very popular lecturer, often used the Buddha and Lao Tzu in his discussions on physics in his classes. He made up his own coat of arms with the yin/ yang symbol on it. This was a physicist in the 1940's already sensing the hopeful possibilities of blending Buddhism and science.
Later on Friedof Capra came out with his Tao of Physics, and he expanded on some of Bohr's tentative impressions. Capra argues not only that modern science and Eastern mysticism offer parallel insights into the ultimate nature of reality, but that the profound harmony between these concepts as expressed in systems language and the corresponding ideas of Eastern mysticism is impressive evidence for my claim that the essence of mystical (also known as perennial) philosophy, offers the most consistent philosophical background to our modern scientific theories. So this is one thing. Now people often turn to a couple of passages in a Buddhist text that I am going to read tonight to show that, "Yes, they are immensely congruent—Buddhism and modern science." Most people are familiar with a famous Sutta called the Kalama Sutta. The Kalamas were a group of people who lived in India. The Buddha was wandering around and he came to this village, and I will just read you this passage. "The Buddha once visited a small town in the Kingdom of Kosala and the inhabitants of this town were known by the common name Kalama." The Kalamas voiced their doubts, their perplexity in determining truth or falsehood, because all the competing teachers and doctrines at the time had come in and expounded different notions of the truth, just like in our modern world today.
Then the Buddha gave them this advice, unique in the history of religions:
"Yes, Kalamas, it is proper that you have doubt, that you have perplexity, for a doubt has arisen in a matter which is doubtful. Now, look you Kalamas, do not be led by reports, or tradition, or hearsay. Be not led by the authority of religious texts, not by mere logic or inference, nor by considering appearances, nor by the delight in speculative opinions, nor by seeming possibilities, nor by the idea: 'this is our teacher.' But O Kalamas, when you know for yourselves that certain things are unwholesome ( akusala), and wrong, and bad, then give them up...And when you know for yourselves that certain things are wholesome ( kusald) and good, then accept them and follow them."
The Kalamas voiced their doubts, their perplexity in determining truth or falsehood, because they had been exposed to all the competing teachers and doctrines at the time, and each expounded different notions of the truth. Not unlike our modern world today. The Buddha replied and provided them a Buddhist methodology for searching after truth. What should you use when you inquire after truth in the Buddhist perspective? He said, "Do not be led by reports, or tradition, or hearsay. Don't be led by the authority even of religious texts, nor by mere logic or inference, nor by considering appearances"— this would eliminate exclusive reliance on simply conforming to culture and tradition, as well as "the book," and most philosophical speculation— "nor by delight in speculative opinions, nor by seeming possibilities."
Some might argue that being "led by appearances" would include our scientific method, at least as it has come to be popularly understood— i.e. in its exaggerated reliance on natural phenomena as the only basis of what is true or real, and the equally exaggerated claim that scientific knowledge is the only valid kind of knowledge ('scientism,' and 'positivism.') The Buddha even discounts blind faith in one's teacher. "So, what's left?" you might wonder. Here the Buddha lays out a subtle and quite unique epistemology: "O Kalamas, when you know for yourselves that certain things are unwholesome and wrong and bad, then give them up. And when you know that certain things are wholesome and good, then accept them and follow them."