Buddhism, the only real
science
by Ajahn Brahmavamso Mahathera, Lanka
Daily News, March 28, 2007
Perth, Australia -- I used to be a scientist. I
did Theoretical Physics at Cambridge University, hanging out in the
same building as the later-to-be-famous Professor Stephen Hawking.
I became disillusioned with such science when, as an insider, I saw
how dogmatic some scientists could be. A dogma, according to the
dictionary, is an arrogant declaration of an opinion.
Venerable Ajahn Brahmavamso Mahathera was born Peter Betts
in London, United Kingdom on August 7, 1951. He is the chief
prelate of Bodhinyana Monastery in Western Australia, the Spiritual
Director of the Buddhist Society of Western Australia, Spiritual
Adviser to the Buddhist Society of Victoria, Spiritual Adviser to
the Buddhist Society of South Australia, Spiritual Patron of the
Buddhist Fellowship in Singapore, and Spiritual Patron of the
Bodhikusuma Centre in Sydney.
This was a fitting description of the science that I saw in the
labs of Cambridge. Science had lost its sense of humility.
Egotistical opinion prevailed over the impartial search for Truth.
My favourite aphorism from that time was: "The eminence of a great
scientist, is measured by the length of time that they OBSTRUCT
PROGRESS in their field"!
To understand real science, one can go back to one of its founding
fathers, the English philosopher Francis Bacon (1561 - 1628 ). He
established the framework on which science was to progress, namely
"the greater force of the negative instance".
This meant that, having proposed a theory to explain some natural
phenomenon, then one should try one's best to disprove it! One
should test the theory with challenging experiments. One must put
it on trial with rigorous argument.
When a flaw appears in the theory, only then does science advance.
A new discovery has been made enabling the theory to be adjusted
and refined. This fundamental and original methodology of science
understood that it is impossible to prove anything with absolute
certainty. One can only disprove with absolute certainty.
For example, how can one prove the basic law of gravity that "what
goes up comes down, eventually"? One may throw objects up one
million times and see them fall one million times. But that still
does not prove "what goes up comes down".
For NASA might then 'throw' a Saturn rocket up into space to
explore Mars, and that never comes down to earth again. One
negative instance is enough to disprove the theory with absolute
certainty.
Some misguided scientists maintain the theory that there is no
rebirth, that this stream of consciousness is incapable of
returning to a successive human existence. All one needs to
disprove this theory, according to science, is to find one instance
of rebirth, just one!
Professor Ian Stevenson, as some of you would know, has already
demonstrated many instances of rebirth. The theory of no rebirth
has been disproved. Rebirth is now a scientific fact!
Modern science gives a low priority to any efforts to disprove its
pet theories. There is too much vested interest in power, prestige
and research grants. A courageous commitment to truth takes too
many scientists out of their comfort zone.
Scientists are, for the most part, brainwashed by their education
and their in-group conferences to see the world in a very narrow,
microscopic, way. The very worst scientists are those who behave
like eccentric evangelists, claiming that they alone have the whole
truth, and then demanding the right to impose their views on
everyone else.
Ordinary people know so little about science that they can hardly
even understand the jargon.
Yet, if they read in a newspaper or magazine "a scientist says
that?", then they automatically take it to be true. Compare this to
our reaction when we read in the same journal "a politician says
that?"! Why do scientists have such unchallenged credibility?
Perhaps it is because the language and ritual of science has become
so far removed from the common people, that scientists have become
today's revered and mystical priesthood.
Dressed in their ceremonial white lab coats, chanting
incomprehensible mumbo jumbo about multi-dimensional fractal
parallel universes, and performing magical rituals that
transubstantiate metal and plastic into TVs and computers, these
modern day alchemists are so awesome we'll believe anything they
say. Elitist science, as once was the Pope, is now
infallible.
Some know better. Much of what I learnt 30 years ago has now been
proved wrong. There are, fortunately, many scientists with
integrity and humility who affirm that science is, at best, a work
still in progress.
They know that science can only suggest a truth, but can never
claim a truth. I was once told by a Buddhist G.P. that, on his
first day at a medical school in Sydney, the famous Professor, head
of the Medical School, began his welcoming address by stating "Half
of what we are going to teach you in the next few years is wrong.
Our problem is that we do not know which half it is!" Those were
the words of a real scientist.
Some evangelical scientists would do well to reflect on the
(amended) old saying "Scientists rush in where angels fear to
tread" and stop pontificating about the nature of the mind,
happiness and even Nirvana. Neurologists are especially prone to
such neuroses (Neurosis: an undue adherence to unrealistic ideas of
things).
They are claiming that the mind, awareness and will, is now
adequately explained by activity in the brain. This theory was
disproved over 20 years ago by Prof. Lorber's discovery of the
student at Sheffield University with an IQ of 126, a First Class
degree in mathematics, but with virtually no brain (Science, Vol.
210, 12 Dec 1980)!
More recently, it was disproved by Prof. Pim Van Lommel, who
demonstrated the existence of consciousness activity after clinical
death, i.e. when all brain activity has ceased (Lancet, Vol. 358,
15 December 2001, p 2039).
Although there may be correlation between a measurable activity in
part of the brain and a mental impression, such co-occurrence
doesn't always imply that one is the cause of the other. For
instance, some years ago, research showed a clear correlation
between cigarette smoking and the non-occurrence of Alzheimer's
disease.
It was not that smoking cigarettes somehow caused immunity from
Alzheimer's, as much as the tobacco companies might have wished, it
was only that many smokers did not live long enough to get
Alzheimer's disease!
Thus a co-incidence of two phenomena, even when repeated, does not
mean that one phenomenon is the cause of the other. To claim that
activity in the brain causes awareness, or mind, is plainly
unscientific.
Buddhism is more scientific than modern science. Like science,
Buddhism is based on verifiable cause-and-effect relationships. But
unlike science, Buddhism challenges with thoroughness every
belief.
The famous Kalama Sutta of Buddhism states that one cannot believe
fully in "what one is taught, tradition, hearsay, scripture, logic,
inference, appearance, agreement with established opinion, the
seeming competence of a teacher, or even in one's own
teacher".
How many scientists are as rigorous in their thinking as this?
Buddhism challenges everything, including logic.
It is worth noting that Quantum Theory appeared quite illogical,
even to such great scientists as Einstein, when it was first
proposed. It is yet to be disproved. Logic is only as reliable as
the assumptions on which it is based. Buddhism trusts only clear
and objective experience.
Clear experience occurs when one's measuring instruments, one's
senses, are bright and undisturbed. In Buddhism, this happens when
the hindrances of sloth-and-torpor and restlessness-and-remorse are
both overcome. Objective experience is that which is free from all
bias.
In Buddhism, the three types of bias are desire, ill will and
sceptical doubt. Desire makes one see only what one wants to see,
it bends the truth to fit one's preferences. Ill will makes one
blind to whatever is disturbing or disconcerting to one's views and
it distorts the truth by denial.
Sceptical doubt stubbornly refuses to accept those truths, like
rebirth, that are plainly valid but which fall outside of one's
comforting worldview.
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