I have been thinking about the remarkable achievements of science for many years. In the short period of my life, science and technology have had a huge impact on humanity. And although my own interest in science was initially based on amazement at the advanced technological civilization that lay beyond the borders of my own country, I soon came face to face with the colossal influence of science on human life, especially after my flight into exile in 1959. Today, there is virtually no area of human life left untouched by the influence of science and technology. But do we realize what place science occupies in human life, what changes it can bring and how this process can be managed? This last point is especially important because unless we consciously guide the development of science with moral impulses and especially with compassion, it will not be able to benefit humanity. On the contrary, its results can be destructive.
Understanding the enormous importance of science and its inevitable primacy in the modern world changed my attitude towards it from amazement to deep concern. The highest spiritual ideal from the Buddhist point of view is to develop compassion for all living beings and to work with all possible zeal for their welfare. From my earliest childhood I was trained to follow this ideal and strive to realize it in all my actions. Therefore, I wanted to understand science, because this understanding opened up a new field of study for me, by entering which I hoped to better understand the nature of reality. And besides, I saw in such study a necessary way of transmitting the spiritual insights accumulated in my own religious tradition. Thus, the need to get in touch with this powerful force in the world became a kind of spiritual urge. The main question – central to the survival and well-being of all humanity – is how, based on the ideals of altruism and compassion, the wonderful achievements of science can be brought to the service of all humanity and the other living beings who share our planet.
Is there a place for morality in science? I believe there is. First of all, scientific achievements, like any tool, can be used for both good and evil. The use of a tool depends on the state of mind of the person wielding it. Second, scientific discoveries influence how we understand the world and our place in it. And this in turn affects our behavior. For example, a mechanistic understanding of the world led to the industrial revolution, and a consumer attitude towards nature arose in society. There is, however, a widespread opinion that morality comes into its own only in the sphere of application of scientific discoveries, but not in the scientific search itself. According to this view, the individual scientist and the entire scientific community as a whole occupy a completely indifferent position in moral terms and do not bear any responsibility for the results of the application of their research. Nevertheless, many important scientific discoveries, and especially the technological innovations that resulted from them, have led to the emergence of new opportunities, which in turn pose various moral, ethical and spiritual problems for humanity. We cannot simply turn a blind eye to the responsibility of all science and each individual scientist for their contribution to the construction of a new reality in our world.
The first priority, perhaps, is to ensure that the scientific process is connected with the fundamental sense of human compassion for people and for the whole world around us. Just as one finger can only function as part of the entire palm, each individual scientist must be aware of his connection to society as a whole. Science is vital, but it is like a finger that is part of the palm of all humanity, and its greatest potential will serve the good of people only if we always remember this. Otherwise, we risk losing the idea of the priority of values. Nowadays the danger of the cessation of human existence as a result of the development of science is greater than for any other reasons. Science and technology are very powerful tools, but how to use them is up to people. The best motivation guiding the use of scientific discoveries is that which comes from the unity of mind and heart.
In my opinion, science is the first and most important empirical discipline that provides humanity with access to understanding the living and nonliving world. It allows us to pose the most essential questions, the answers to which are provided by detailed knowledge regarding the basic laws of nature, extracted by scientists from the observation of empirical data. Science has at its disposal the most sophisticated methods, including measurements, quantitative analysis and independent confirmation of the findings through repeated experiments. All this forms the basis of the scientific method and is included in the scientific paradigm. Based on this model, it turns out that many aspects of human existence, including questions of value, creativity and spirituality, as well as many metaphysical problems, are beyond the scope of scientific consideration.
However, despite the existence of vast areas of life and experience that lie outside the realm of science, many people are of the opinion that the scientific approach should be the basis of all knowledge and that science covers everything knowable without exception. This is scientific materialism. I cannot pinpoint exactly which philosophical system contains such a statement, but it seems to me that for many such a way of thinking is an unquestionable starting premise. This point of view is based on the belief in the existence of an objective world independent of the circumstances in which the observer finds himself. It contains the assumption that the data obtained in the experiment are completely independent of the prerequisites, perceptions and personality of the experimenter himself.
This view is based on the assumption that, in the final sense, everything around us consists of physical matter, existing according to its own physical laws. From this, in turn, it follows that psychology can be reduced to biology, biology to chemistry, and chemistry to physics. In this case, I am trying not so much to object to such a reductionist approach (despite the fact that I myself do not share it at all), but to draw the reader’s attention to a very important point: such ideas in themselves do not at all follow from scientific knowledge, but, on the contrary, represent is a philosophical and essentially metaphysical position. The idea that reality in all its aspects can be reduced to matter with its various particles is, in my opinion, as much a metaphysical point of view as the idea that the world is created and controlled by some intelligent being.
One of the main dangers of such extreme scientific materialism is the narrowness of ideas, which results in complete nihilism. Nihilism, materialism and reductionism are a big problem from a philosophical and especially a humanistic perspective, since they greatly impoverish our understanding of ourselves. For example, do we consider ourselves to be an accidental biological entity or, on the contrary, a special being endowed with a certain degree of consciousness and moral sense? Adopting one of these points of view will have an impact on both our sense of self and how we treat other people. According to the reductionist approach described above, we will have to consider many aspects of human existence – such as art, morality, spirituality, kindness, the sense of beauty, and most of all consciousness – either as consequences of chemical reactions in neural networks, or solely as a figment of our imagination. This threatens to entrench the idea of people as a kind of biorobots, products of a random combination of genes whose sole function is biological self-reproduction.
It is difficult to imagine how it is possible to include ideas about good and evil or the meaning of life in such a picture of the world. And the point here is not in the empirical scientific data themselves, but in the idea that only these data in themselves can be the basis for a holistic picture of the world and solutions to all the world’s problems. However, human existence and reality itself contain much more than what scientific experiment gives us access to.
But at the same time, spirituality must take into account scientific discoveries and understandings. If spiritual practitioners begin to completely ignore scientific achievements, this threatens the degeneration of spirituality, since such a position leads to religious fundamentalism. This is one of the reasons why I encourage Buddhist educational institutions to include scientific disciplines in their curriculum, so that these sciences are included in the Buddhist worldview.
Read online. The book “The Universe in One Atom: Science and Spirituality in the Service of the World.” Tenzin Gyatso
Content
Preface. Introduction
1. Meditation
2. My encounter with science
3. Emptiness, relativity and quantum physics
4. The Big Bang Theory and the Buddhist Beginningless Cosmos
5. Evolution, karma and the world of living beings
6. The problem of the emergence of consciousness
7. Towards a science of consciousness
8. Factors of consciousness
9. Ethical problems of modern genetics
Conclusion. Science, Spirituality and Humanity