Month: January 2011

Although many Christian Conservatives sound downright irrational when discussing Darwinian theory, the Dalai Lama seems to accept the basic theory but points out what he considers some of its limitations and explains why Buddhism disagrees with parts of it. It’s the kind of intelligent argument that makes us want to listen to what’s being said rather than automatically tuning it out.

In fact, I learned several things about the theory that I didn’t know previously, particularly how widely it has influenced scientific thought:

The Darwinian theory is an explanatory framework that accounts for the wealth of flora and fauna, the richness of what Buddhists call sentient beings and plants that effectively constitute the biological world available to us. So far the theory has avoided disproof and has offered the most coherent scientific understanding of the evolution of the diversity of life on earth. The theory applies as much to the molecular level-that is, to the adaptation and selection of individual genes-as to the macrocosmic level of large organisms. Despite its remarkable adaptability to all levels on which we might say life flourishes, Darwin’s theory does not explicitly address the conceptual question of what life is. This said, there are a number of key characteristics that biology understands to be essential for life, such as organisms being self-sustaining systems and naturally possessing some mechanisms for reproduction. In addition, the key definitions of life include the ability to develop away from chaos and toward order, which is called “negative entropy.”

It never occurred to me to think of Darwinian theory on a molecular level, but it makes sense that if if it operated on one level it should also operate on a lower level. too.

Of course if I’d wanted to learn more about Darwinian theory I would have chosen a very different book, but, as it turns out, reading the Dalai Lama’s views about scientific views is an excellent way to gain insight into a culture that I know very little about despite what most people would consider extensive readings in Chinese and Japanese literature. For instance, I’d never considered that the Buddhist definition of “life” might be different than our own:

The Buddhist Abhidharma tradition, by contrast, defines sok, the Tibetan equivalent for the English term life, as that which supports “heat” and “consciousness.” To some extent the differences are semantic, since what Buddhist thinkers mean by life and living relates entirely to sentient beings and not to plants, while modern biology has a much broader conception of life, taking it all the way down to the cellular level. The Abhidharma definition does not correspond to the biological account mostly because the underlying motive of Buddhist theory is to answer ethical questions that can be considered only in relation to higher forms of life.

The Dalai Lama points out another interesting contrast between Buddhism and modern science:

However, in Buddhism there is a greater appreciation of the challenge of accounting for the emergence of sentient beings from what is essentially a non-sentient basis.

This difference of concern suggests an interesting contrast between Buddhism and modern science, which may have partly to do with the complex historical, social, and cultural differences that underlie the development of these two investigative traditions. For modern science, at least from a philosophical point of view, the critical divide seems to be between inanimate matter and the origin of living organisms, while for Buddhism the critical divide is between non-sentient matter and the emergence of sentient beings.

and then explains why Buddhism makes this distinction:

Buddhism draws the critical division differently-i.e., between sentience and non-sentience-because it is primarily interested in the alleviation of suffering and the quest for happiness. In Buddhism, the evolution of the cosmos and the emergence of the sentient beings within it-indeed, effectively everything within the purview of the physical and life sciences-belong within the domain of the first of the Four Noble Truths, which the Buddha taught in his initial sermon. The Four Noble Truths state that within the realm of impermanent phenomena there is suffering, suffering has an origin, the cessation of suffering is possible, and there is a path to the cessation of suffering. As I see it, science falls within the scope of the first truth in that it examines the material bases of suffering, for it covers the entire spectrum of the physical environment-“the container”-as well as the sentient beings-“the contained.” It is in the mental realm-the realm of psychology, consciousness, the afflictions, and karma-that we find the second of the truths, the origin of suffering. The third and fourth truths, cessation and the path, are effectively outside the domain of scientific analysis in that they pertain primarily to what might be called philosophy and religion.

I’ve encountered the Four Noble Truths many times in my readings, but I’d never thought of them as having this radical effect on the way Buddhists see the world. In fact, I’d never thought about them other than as a philosophy or religion. It would never have occurred to me that they might affect the way people looked at scientific truths.

Of course, I was even more surprised by this:

In Buddhism, there is no recognition of the presence of something like the “soul” that is unique to humans. From the perspective of consciousness, the difference between humans and animals is a matter of degree and not of kind.

Though I should probably have known this, just as I know that the Chinese have no concept of heaven and hell, I’m so accustomed to the concept of “soul,” I didn’t know it. Heck, I’m so accustomed to the concept that I would even argue that “Skye” has a soul, and is probably more apt to end in heaven than I am.

The Dalai Lama’s greatest criticism of Darwinism, though, is that it seems unwilling or unable to account for many positive human traits:

At one of the Mind and Life conferences in Dharamsala, the Harvard historian of science Anne Harrington made a memorable presentation on how, and to some extent why, scientific investigation of human behavior has so far failed to develop any systematic understanding of the powerful emotion of compassion. At least in modern psychology, compared with the tremendous amount of attention paid to negative emotions, such as aggression, anger, and fear, relatively little examination has been made of more positive emotions, such as compassion and altruism. This emphasis may have arisen because the principal motive in modern psychology has been to understand human pathologies for therapeutic purposes. However, I do feel that it is unacceptable to reject altruism on the ground that selfless acts do not fit within the current biological understanding of life or are simply redefinable as expressions of the self-interest of the species. This stance is contrary to the very spirit of scientific inquiry. As I understand it, the scientific approach is not to modify the empirical facts to fit one’s theory; rather the theory must be adapted to fit the results of empirical inquiry. Otherwise it would be like trying to reshape one’s feet to fit the shoes.

This sounds an awful lot like Maslow’s argument against a “science” which is unable to find room for “religious” or “peak” experiences:

I feel that this inability or unwillingness fully to engage the question of altruism is perhaps the most important drawback of Darwinian evolutionary theory, at least in its popular version. In the natural world, which is purported to be the source of the theory of evolution, just as we observe competition between and within species for survival, we observe profound levels of cooperation (not necessarily in the conscious sense of the term). Likewise, just as we observe acts of aggression in animals and humans, we observe acts of altruism and compassion. Why does modern biology accept only competition to be the fundamental operating principle and only aggression to be the fundamental trait of living beings? Why does it reject cooperation as an operating principle, and why does it not see altruism and compassion as possible traits for the development of living beings as well?

I’ll have to admit that I never really considered concepts like Social Darwinism scientific, figuring that they were merely the rationalization of selfish people to justify their actions. I’m pretty sure the willingness to sacrifice for others, whether family or the group, is one of the traits that has allowed us to outcompete other species. If we hope to have any kind of future worth living, let’s hope we don’t manage to eliminate that trait.

In the chapter entitled “The Big Bang and the Buddhist Beginningless Universe” the Dalai Lama shows that Buddhist cosmology is close to current scientific theories in many ways,

Modern cosmology-like so much else in the physical sciences-is founded on Einstein’s theory of relativity. In cosmology, astronomical observations taken together with the theory of general relativity, which reformulated gravity as the curvature of both space and time, have shown that our universe is neither eternal nor static in its current form. It is continuously evolving and expanding. This finding accords with the basic intuition of the ancient Buddhist cosmologists, who conceived that any particular universe system goes through stages of formation, expansion, and ultimately destruction.

but also explains where the two differ.e

I found this explanation of why Buddhists argue against a single definite beginning rather intriguing:

From the Buddhist perspective, the idea that there is a single definite beginning is highly problematic. If there were such an absolute beginning, logically speaking, this leaves only two options. One is theism, which proposes that the universe is created by an intelligence that is totally transcendent, and therefore outside the laws of cause and effect. The second option is that the universe came into being from no cause at all. Buddhism rejects both these options. If the universe is created by a prior intelligence, the questions of the ontological status of such an intelligence and what kind of reality it is remain.

Way back in high school when I was still naive enough to argue religion with fundamentalist Christians, I would counter with, “Who made God?” What kind of explanation posits an Unknown as the basis for the rest of the argument? Philosophically, I’m much more in tune with this Buddhist view, though I’m even more in tune with The Buddha:

According to the early scriptures, the Buddha himself never directly answered questions put to him about the origin of the universe. In a famous simile, the Buddha referred to the person who asks such questions as a man wounded by a poisoned arrow. Instead of letting the surgeon pull the arrow out, the injured man insists first on discovering the caste, name, and clan of the man who shot the arrow; whether he is dark, brown, or fair; whether he lives in a village, town, or city; whether the bow used was a longbow or a crossbow; whether the bowstring was fiber, reed, hemp, sinew, or bark; whether the arrow shaft was of wild or cultivated wood; and so forth. Interpretations of the meaning of the Buddha’s refusal to answer these questions directly vary.

Personally, I’m far more interested in finding happiness than I am in abstract philosophical arguments that ultimately seem insolvable, which is not to say that I don’t realize that there are important ramifications of differing answers to these ultimate questions.

The poet in me loves this definition:

Similarly, in beautiful poetic verses, the text compares the intricate and profoundly interconnected reality of the world to an infinite net of gems called “Indra’s jeweled net,” which reaches out to infinite space. At each knot on the net is a crystal gem, which is connected to all the other gems and reflects in itself all the others. On such a net, no jewel is in the center or at the edge. Each and every jewel is at the center in that it reflects all the other jewels on the net. At the same time, it is at the edge in that it is itself reflected in all the other jewels. Given the profound interconnectedness of everything in the universe, it is not possible to have total knowledge of even a single atom unless one is omniscient. To know even one atom truly would imply knowledge of its relations to all other phenomena in the infinite universe.

Wonder how our world would be different if more people believed in this model? One would certainly have a hard time reconciling this view with America’s emphasis on rugged individualism.

The Dalai Lama makes an interesting distinction between the evolution of the universe and the evolution of human consciousness:

My own view is that the entire process of the unfolding of a universe system is a matter of the natural law of causality. I envision karma coming into the picture at two points. When the universe has evolved to a stage where it can support the life of sentient beings, its fate becomes entangled with the karma of the beings who will inhabit it. More difficult perhaps is the first intervention of karma, which is effectively the maturation of the karmic potential of the sentient beings who will occupy that universe, which sets in motion its coming into being.

The ability to discern exactly where karma intersects with the natural law of causation is traditionally said to lie only within the Buddha’s omniscient mind. The problem is how to reconcile two strands of explanation-first, that any universe system and the beings within it arise from karma, and second, that there is a natural process of cause and effect, which simply unfolds. The early Buddhist texts suggest that matter on the one hand and consciousness on the other relate according to their own process of cause and effect, which gives rise to new sets of functions and properties in both cases. On the basis of understanding their nature, causal relations, and functions, one can then derive inferences-for both matter and consciousness- that give rise to knowledge. These stages were codified as “four principles”-the principle of nature, the principle of dependence, the principle of function, and the principle of evidence.

This interpretation nicely side-steps any direct conflict between science and Buddhism. Even seems to side-step the Darwin controversy. Too bad certain Christian religions can’t manage to do the same.

In the end, though, the Dalai Lama makes it clear his view of the world is not limited by science:

Even with all these profound scientific theories of the origin of the universe, I am left with questions, serious ones: What existed before the big bang? Where did the big bang come from? What caused it? Why has our planet evolved to support life? What is the relationship between the cosmos and the beings that have evolved within it? Scientists may dismiss these questions as nonsensical, or they may acknowledge their importance but deny that they belong to the domain of scientific inquiry. However, both these approaches will have the consequence of acknowledging definite limits to our scientific knowledge of the origin of our cosmos. I am not subject to the professional or ideological constraints of a radically materialistic worldview.

And in Buddhism the universe is seen as infinite and beginningless, so I am quite happy to venture beyond the big bang and speculate about possible states of affairs before it.

It’s hard to imagine a religious leader who would limit themselves to “scientific truths.” Such truths, after all, seldom inspire the kind of faith that religious followers expect.