http://www.salon.com/books/int/2006/11/27/wallace/
Nov. 27, 2006 | The debate between science and religion typically
gets stuck on the thorny question of God's existence. How do you
reconcile an all-powerful God with the mechanistic slog of
evolution? Can a rationalist do anything but sneer at the Bible's
miracles? But what if another religion -- a nontheistic one --
offered a way out of this impasse? That's the promise that some
people hold out for in Buddhism. The Dalai Lama himself is deeply
invested in reconciling science and spirituality. He meets
regularly with Western scientists, looking for links between
Buddhism and the latest research in physics and neuroscience. In
his book "The Universe in a Single Atom," he wrote, "If scientific
analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in
Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science
and abandon those claims."
B. Alan Wallace may be the American Buddhist most committed to
finding connections between Buddhism and science. An ex-Buddhist
monk who went on to get a doctorate in religious studies at
Stanford, he once studied under the Dalai Lama, and has acted as
one of the Tibetan leader's translators. Wallace, now president of
the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies, has written
and edited many books, often challenging the conventions of modern
science. "The sacred object of its reverence, awe and devotion is
not God or spiritual enlightenment but the material universe," he
writes. He accuses prominent scientists like E.O. Wilson and
Richard Dawkins of practicing "a modern kind of nature
religion."
In his new book, "Contemplative Science: Where Buddhism and
Neuroscience Converge," Wallace takes on the loaded subject of
consciousness. He argues that the long tradition of Buddhist
meditation, with its rigorous investigation of the mind, has in
effect pioneered a science of consciousness, and that it has much
to teach Western scientists. "Subjectivity is the central taboo of
scientific materialism," he writes. He considers the Buddhist
examination of interior mental states far preferable to what he
calls the Western "idolatry of the brain." And he says the modern
obsession with brain chemistry has created a false sense of
well-being: "It is natural then to view psychopharmaceutical and
psychotropic drugs as primary sources of happiness and relief from
suffering." Wallace also chastises cognitive psychologists and
neuroscientists for assuming the mind is merely the product of the
physical mechanics of the brain. And he talks openly about ideas
that most scientists would consider laughable, including
reincarnation and a transcendent consciousness.
In conversation, Wallace is a fast talker who laughs easily and
often gets carried away with his enthusiasm. I spoke with him by
phone about the Buddhist theory of consciousness, his critique of
both science and Christianity, and why he thinks reincarnation
should be studied by scientists.
Why do you think Buddhism has an important perspective to
add to the science and religion debate?
Buddhism has a lot to add for a number of reasons. Some are simply
historical. Especially since the time of Galileo, there has been a
sense of unease, if not outright hot war, between religion and
science in the West. And Buddhism is coming in as a complete
outsider. It's not theistic, as is Christianity. At the same time,
it's not just science, as is physics or biology. And there's
another reason why Buddhism may bring a fresh perspective. While
there's no question that Buddhism has very religious elements to it
-- with monks and temples, rituals and prayers -- it does have a
broad range of empirical methods for investigating the nature of
the mind, for raising hypotheses and putting them to the
test.
There's a common assumption that science and religion are
entirely separate domains. Science covers the empirical realm of
facts and theories about the observable world, while religion deals
with ultimate meaning and moral value. But you don't accept that
dichotomy, do you?
Not at all. In fact, most religious people don't. This is a notion
that's been brought up by Stephen Jay Gould with his whole notion
of "non-overlapping magisteria." But it's never been true. All of
the great pioneers of the scientific revolution -- Copernicus,
Galileo, Kepler, Newton, and on into the 19th century with Gregor
Mendel -- they were all Christians. And their whole approach to
science was deeply influenced by Christianity. Religion, whether we
like it or not, is making many truth claims about the natural world
as well as the transcendent world. And now that science is honing
in on the nature of the mind and questions of free will, it is
definitely invading the turf that used to belong to religion and
philosophy.
Many people would acknowledge that Buddhism has some
profound insights into the human mind -- why we get depressed, what
makes us happy and how we become slaves to our attachments. But
what does this have to do with science?
In Buddhism, the very root of suffering and all our mental distress
-- what Buddhists call mental afflictions -- is ignorance. The path
to liberation, or enlightenment, is knowledge. It's knowing reality
as it is. So despite many differences in methodology, both science
and Buddhism are after knowledge of the natural world. But what
defines the natural world? In modern science, the natural world is
often equated with the physical world, and mental phenomena and
subjective experiences are regarded as emergent phenomena or simply
functions of the brain. But there are many other domains of reality
that the physical instruments of science have not yet been able to
detect.
But science is as much about method as anything. The
scientific method posits hypotheses and theories that can be
tested. Is that something Buddhism does as well?
Not in the same way. I wouldn't want to overplay the case that
Buddhism has always been a science, with clear hypotheses and
complete skepticism. It's too much of a religion, and so there's a
lot of vested interest in the Buddhist community not to challenge
the statements made by the Buddha and other great patriarchs in the
Buddhist tradition. So there are some fundamental differences. At
the same time, science is not just science. This very notion that
the mind must simply be an emergent property of the brain --
consisting only of physical phenomena and nothing more -- is not a
testable hypothesis. Science is based upon a very profound
metaphysical foundation. Can you test the statement that there is
nothing else going on apart from physical phenomena and their
emergent properties? The answer is no.
You're saying we don't know for sure that the physical
functions of the brain -- the neural circuits, the electrochemical
surges -- are what produce our rich inner lives, what we call the
mind?
Cognitive science has plenty of hypotheses that are testable. For
instance, is Alzheimer's related to a particular malfunctioning of
the brain? More and more, scientists are able to identify the parts
and functions of the brain that are necessary to generate specific
mental states. So these are scientific issues. But now let's tap
into what the philosopher David Chalmers has called "the hard
problem" -- the relationship between the physical brain and
consciousness. What is it about the brain -- this mass of chemicals
and electromagnetic fields -- that enables it to generate any state
of subjective experience? If your sole access to the mind is by way
of physical phenomena, then you have no way of testing whether all
dimensions of the mind are necessarily contingent upon the
brain.
