NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/sci/philosop/meta/2901

Internet Message Format | 1993-01-03 | 8.9 KB

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From: [e-mail] (Leo Smith)
Subject: Re: Buddhism & Science
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 1993 10:05:00 +0000
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In-Reply-To: <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Lorenzo Farris)

Again, this goes back to the Buddhism that you have been exposed to,
Following my theme of generally being provocative - Oh and BTW
Lorenzo - thanks for a better exposition on Buddhism than I could
give, and no, I was referring more to the Zen type of Buddhism, but
more of that anon...


> With regards to transmission, in esoteric Buddhism, the teacher transmitts >knowled
ge to the student telepathically. There is no language
nvolved. It >is analogous to someone who has been blind from birth
acquiring an
>experience of what it is like to see, without ever developing physical
>sight.

Revisiting some territry that I indicated earlier, the use of
rhetoric may be appropriate:-


           1/. Does a small child understand language?


           2/. How does a small child gain an understanding of language?


Most mystical traditions take you back to the pre-verbal pre-language
methods of relating to the world. That is why they are often littered
with child metaphors [except as ye be as little
children...innocence...etc]

I think the point here is that the concepts that a child acquires
dictate the nature of the worldview from then on: More than that,
they dictate the transformations possible in that worldview. If you
live in a world of a certain set of concepts, and these form the
axiomatic limits of what you can concieve or apprehend, then there is
no way, without re-examining those axioms, that yiu can substantially
change youir worldview.

This is, I believe, the meaning behind all esoteric traditions. They
are ways to re-assess the fundamental assumptions in your worldview.
The approach differs - Christianity is more emotional than Buddhism,
but they all lead to that 'union with God' experience which I take to
be the experience of undifferentiated existence - pre-lingusitic,
pre-conceptual experience.


What is the relevance of this to Science and Logic. Immense. Logic is
the glue that binds the conceptual objects of our worldview together.
Science is the process of adding to this logical structure.

To revisit the pre-structural experience is to visit the territory
where ideas and concepts first come into being, where our innate
axioms such as 'space' and 'time' come into being.  It has been said
that the ultimate point about reality is that it is what comes up and
hits you in the face when you fall over. But for a pre-lingual child
that CANNOT be true. To that child, some infinitely powerful cosmic
event has caused it to experience something woefully unpleasant and
unexpected. This is the territory where gods and demons are born, to
be later explained away by Newton as 'gravity' :-)

Returning to the original thread. Buddshism is the LOGICAL approach
to estoteric matters IMHO. Buddhism talks about methodologies to
approach mystical states. It talks about the problems of knowledge
and language. And it does this in a non mathematical way, but it
explores the same paradoxes and recursions as Godel. Why not? These
are innate problems in the way we think. Other intelligent beings
beside Western philosophers have pondered the same points too...What
Esoteric Buddhism offers are practical ways to examine some aspects
of language mentality and mind.

In that context it is very necessary to distinguish between 'mind'
'thought' and 'language'

When I originally referred to Buddhism as the greatest thought
experiment ever concieved, I meant that in the sense of
non-linguistic thought (no words involved, and not many pictures
either!).  Now I realise that to a Western trained logician or
philosopher, that concept is possibly  self contradictory.
Nevertheless, I stick to my original assertion.

In my opinion (and doubtless many will argue that this is not what
Buddhism is about or should be about) buddhism amongst other
traditions shows us the way our picture of the world can be
disentangled - so that you can retrace the steps in your personal
learning back to the time when you first became aware of yourself,
and the rest of the world - and beyond. To re-visit that area is to
understand how all of our knowledge is built on the basic tenets of a
small very young chimpanzee-like creature in its attempts to come to
terms with a world of language and building blocks, of emotions and
sensations. Those tenets may not be so appropriate at the age of 40+
as they were at the age of two, particularly if the chimpanzee is now
a theoretical physicist.

I have been criticised in the past for criticising science. Randall
in particular is a firm adherent to the tenet that 'if it works it
must be true'.  Quite. My cat doubtless believes that a piteous yowl
to the greater gods will always produce cat food. It generally always
has, but does that make it true? He doesn't need to understand the
complexity of how that food gets to him. He is only concerned with
survival - not truth. Science is no better. Science that doesn't lead
to predictions is non-science, and science that leads to predictions
of unpredictability (chaos theory?) is borderline!  So Science IS
utilitarian -  a set of rules-of-thumb justified by repeatibility and
repeatability. But those rules of thumb are built on the basic
concepts that are inherent in the way we view the world. Esoteric
traditions go beyond that - to give the power to re-structure the way
we see the world. Very few people need that power: It has only two or
three valid uses IMHO - the first is to straighten out personal kinks
- as therapy if you will. Well religion and therapy is a subject I
will not get drawn into here. The second useage is exploration of the
paranormal. Again I am not going to go into why modification of the
worldview leads to paranormal effects.

The third valid use however, is to develop new fundamental basic
concepts - the paradigm shifts of Kuhn.  I cannot help but see the
whole of the current complexity of experimental and theoretical
physics as the ultimate and logical conclusion of some very basic
tenets - that 'we' inhabit a 'universe' which is composed of 'matter'
that 'exists' in 'time' and has 'space' as a component of it, and
which 'universe' is in fact a complex solution to a series of simpler
equations called 'physical laws'. These are as succinctly as I can
express them, the assumptions underlying physics.


But are they the most appropriate ones? They are certainly highly
appropriate for a 'tool' 'wielding' 'ape-man' trying to make his way
in the 'world' (PC female readers assume the feminine alternatives
please). But are they appropriate for nuclear physics, or even
weather forecasting?

If the logical extrapolation of those tenets is their negation - i.e.
in the case of my understanding of Bohm, that the universe may have
to be a solution to a far more complex equation than the universe
appears to be itself! - then waht are the implications. Suppose that
subatomic activity is assumed to be random and that 'God does play
dice' - that also knocks the underlying reductionism of science on
its head.

This is where esotericism and metaphysics OUGHT to be coming to the
rescue. By moving away from assumptions of absolute knowledge towards
realisation that knowledge is always relative - to our language, to
our concepts, ultimately to our personal experience, we are prevented
from our attempts to elevate ourselves to godlike status.  Instead of
the search for Ultimate Truth, our goals can become more realistic:
New models of simplicity elegance and uitility - within the context
for which they are intended.

So when I talk about a 'beautiful woman' it will be understood in the
context of my own personal sexuality and preference, and not an
attempt to lay down universal standards of morality and
picturesqueness. Investigations of quarks and leptons may just help
us develop new power sources, better computers or lasers, but should
not affect personal morality.

It is this terrible extrapolation, of 'scientific theory' to
'universal fact' that has really caused some fundamental human
problems in the twentyieth century. Because the assumption of
physical science have been spectacularly successful, there has been
the tendency to assume also that 'there is no god but Universal field
theory, and Newton is his prophet'. Christianity has been unable to
do more than meekly nod in assent, but Buddhism has in fact got the
answer. "That is a suitable *assumption* for sending rockets to the
moon, but is it the right attitude to bring towards other aspects of
human life?"

And it may not even be a suitable assumption for subatomic physics
either.