Does Buddhism Have to Be Scientific?

[Dharmavidya]

Donald Lopez has an interesting article in the current issue of Tricycle magazine in which he asks the question, "why should Buddhism be consistent with science?" He outlines the history of how European colonialism brought Christianity to Asia and was assisted in persuading Asians by its alliance with science, Christianity and science being two fruits of European culture. Buddhists resisted this pressure and advanced the idea that Buddhism was more consistent with science than Christianity and therefore a more fitting religion for the modern age. Having won this argument, however, we now find that Buddhism is being more than somewhat remodelled in the image of science. Meditation and especially mindfulness are being presented as quasi-medical treatments for stress reduction, for instance, whereas, as Lopez points out, stress-reduction was no part of the original objective of these techniques. Indeed, Lopez goes as far as to say that meditation was originally in tended to effect a stress increment. It's original intention was, he says, to make one anxious, indeed desperate, to leave samsara, not to make one more at ease living within it.

This is an interesting argument. I agree with Lopez that science should not be the measuring stick of religion. Making it so is essentially a misunderstanding about the nature of science. Science is not a system to tell you how to run your life or what your aims should be. It may be able to help you get there once you have decided where you are going, but science is not about values, it is about the nature of the situation. It would be just a scientific or unscientific to increase stress as to reduce it. Science's job, in that regard, is to elucidate the matter and process of stress. It is then for us to decide whether we want less or more of it. Similarly, science can investigate meditation and find out what it is and how it functions, but that does not, in itself, tell us whether we want to do it or not nor why we might want to.

What has happened is that a quasi-religion that we might call scientism has arisen based partly on a misunderstanding of the nature of science, partly on the prestige that science has achieved and partly upon using the scientific method as a metaphor for processes in other areas of life. Some of the misunderstanding is in thinking that what is sometimes called scientific management is science, whereas it is actually the use of science in management. If we want to manage stress, to take the case in point, we can use some knowledge that science provides. This would be true whether we thought stress to be good and useful or destructive or useless. The fact that management can use science does not make the goals of management scientific. 

Scientific method relies heavily on measurement and reproducibility of effects. This has led some people to the false conclusion that unmeasurable or non-reproducible phenomena do not and cannot exist. Science cannot, however, validate this conclusion. It is not possible to prove scientifically that an unmeasurable phenomenon does not exist nor that an unrepeatable event has not occurred and certainly not that one cannot occur in the future. Science has its province and within it it has had many successes, but that does not justify its extension by analogy.

Moving on from these points about science, what about Buddhism? Lopez clearly hold to what I would call the extinctionist interpretation of Buddhism. I do not share this perspective. I belong to the liberationist persuasion. As between these two positions, I do not think there is any way to settle the matter ultimately. Shakyamuni is not here to ask and many texts are open to either interpretation. A lot depends upon how you interpret a number of key terms. 

In my experience, meditation does reduce stress, as a matter of fact, and I do not think that this fact is either anti-Buddhist or pro-science or vice versa. I do think that Buddhism is about living more fully in this and all worlds and that references to leaving samsara refer to living differently, not to ceasing to live. Samsara is the style of life in which one goes round and round in fruitless circles. The purpose of awakening and enlightenment is to free us from such compulsive self-defeat and faith in Buddhism is essentially openness to the help that one can receive from those who have so been freed.

From this position, I do not have any problem with Buddhists asserting that Buddhism is not in conflict with science, but I do share Lopez' concern that Buddhism is being changed by those who actually are not really Buddhist (either extinctionist or liberationist) but are actually believers in scientism which is a rather shallow creed that is not likely to survive current fashion. 

[Armida]

Modern science is limited.  Consequently, it is based on theories and hypotheses.  In very few cases, there are laws; but even these laws have had to be altered due to new theories about quantum physics.  In my opinion, and that is all it is, all religions have had their basis on how they understood existence to function.  Thusly, their religion was their science.  It is when religious leaders reified their understanding understanding of existence that their spiritual venture became stiff as an old bamboo limb.  It is important to remain the observer without latching to any platform that becomes adamantly frozen....our objective is to remain in contemplation, fully relaxed and non-judgmental...at play with the infinite display 

[Jiko]

I personally fall into this fold often,  seeking to clarify dharma with science :(

But I am coming to realise that science is far off the mark in knowledge of truth,  science is always looking outward through the telescope and will never know the key to the universe until they look through the other end,  inward.