Tags
Donald S. Lopez Jr., Edward Said, Friedrich Nietzsche, Michel Foucault, Robert M. Gimello, Tiantai 天台
The most recent book from Donald S. Lopez, Jr., one of the most widely read contemporary American scholars of Buddhism, is entitled Buddhism and Science. Unlike most books with this title, it does not explore similarities or complementarities between Buddhist tradition and the natural sciences. It is instead best described by Lopez’s original intended subtitle: A Historical Critique. Alas, Lopez’s publishers apparently thought this subtitle boring, and therefore required him to replace it; his chosen replacement, A Guide for the Perplexed, is not particularly exciting either, and more importantly makes it impossible for the casual reader to find out the ways that this book is drastically different from all the other books out there with the same title.
I am not here to write about dreadful editorial decisions, however, but rather the content of the book. Lopez undertakes what has become one of the most standard methodologies in the contemporary academic humanities: following Foucault and ultimately Nietzsche, it is typically known as genealogy. One starts with a widely used contemporary concept and goes on to show the history of its usage, in order to create doubts among those who might otherwise use it. This has already been done plenty of times both for the concepts of “Buddhism” and of “science”; Lopez’s project here is instead a genealogy of the joint concept of “Buddhism and science,” the frequent form of inquiry that tries to link the two conceptually or analytically. As is typical for contemporary genealogies ever since Edward Said (though not for Foucault’s own and certainly not Nietzsche’s), Lopez finds the origins of “Buddhism and science” in the colonial nineteenth century. He shows us that claims about Buddhism’s compatibility with science remain remarkably consistent from the late 19th century to the early 21st, even though the science itself has changed drastically.
Now what is the purpose of showing us this point? From Nietzsche onward, the genealogical method has never been neutral. The point has always been to undermine. Lopez doesn’t like “Buddhism and science” any more than Nietzsche liked morality. But Lopez is shier than Nietzsche in proclaiming his distaste for the topic of his genealogy. In a followup article published in the “religion and science” journal Zygon last December, Lopez brings out an “argumentative thesis” which, he claims, was only “implied” in his book:
that claims for the compatibility of Buddhism and science have been made in surprisingly consistent rhetorical forms over the course of more than a century and a half, years in which huge advances have occurred in the natural sciences. What is understood by “Buddhism” also has changed considerably over the period. That the claim has remained the same while the meaning of the two nouns — Buddhism, science — has changed so greatly raises a simple question that should give us pause: If Buddhism (however this abstract noun is understood) was compatible with the science of the nineteenth century, how can it also be compatible with the science of the twenty-first? Perhaps it never was, and perhaps it is not now. The more interesting question is why the claim continues to be made.
Now of all the seemingly innocuous words that merit a genealogy of their own, perhaps the most important is this “interesting,” so often claimed without argument. What interests tenured scholars of ancient languages is, to put it mildly, often not what interests most people who now live or ever have lived. So when such a scholar uses the word “interesting” as an adjective to denote a property intrinsic to his subject matter itself, as opposed to merely claiming his own personal interest in the subject, we should at least be alert to what makes it so supposedly interesting. In this particular case, the question of “why the claim [of Buddhism’s compatibility with science] continues to be made” is only more interesting if the claim happens to be false. If it is true that Buddhism (however understood) is compatible in important respects with the science of whatever century, the question at issue — why the claim of compatibility is made — ceases to be an interesting one for anyone without an obsessive interest in minutiae. For if this claim is true, then the odds are that that’s the reason it’s being made.
But to actually declare the claim false? That is where Lopez, like most Buddhologists of the present age, refuses to go. In the Zygon article he casually tosses off this bombshell in the middle of a sentence: “no scholar of Buddhism can say what Buddhism should be.” (Lest I be accused of quoting Lopez out of context, I’ll give the whole sentence: “For, although no scholar of Buddhism can say what Buddhism should be, a scholar can say, or at least speculate on the basis of historical evidence, what Buddhism has been for Buddhists across Asia, extending back over more than two millennia.” (891)) The claim is of course false. Buddhism should be a tradition that teaches us important, provocative and potentially true ideas about the nature of reality, how we should live in it, and the practices that will best enable us to do so. I have a PhD in South Asian Buddhism from Harvard University; I am therefore a scholar of Buddhism. And I have just said what Buddhism should be. Obviously, a scholar of Buddhism can say this.
What Lopez presumably means to say is that scholars should not say what Buddhism should be. But the “implied argumentative thesis” above, and indeed the whole book, are important precisely because of their implications for what Buddhism should be. Lopez’s timid rhetorical questions and “perhaps” are a still-timid way of phrasing the motivation behind the book: Lopez likely wants to claim that Buddhism and science are not compatible, not without doing violence to one or the other. If his genealogy were as forceful as Nietzsche’s, he would be able to come right out and say this. But just as Robert Gimello’s class contained a Catholic apologetic disguised as neutral Buddhist studies, so Lopez keeps up the engaged and partisan genealogical method under the guise of neutrality.
Lopez and Gimello share a familiar critique of modernist Buddhism, the Buddhism I have called Yavanayāna. Lopez claims he is trying to call attention to what is lost when it is claimed that Buddhism and science are compatible. I would say that that’s fair enough – except that this mournful scholarly expression of loss always seems to be directed against the Yavanayāna target. You don’t hear such scholars worry about what is lost in Chinese schools of Buddhism that proclaim that material things have an enduring or even eternal existence and we are all already buddhas – directly contradicting some of the most fundamental teachings of the early Buddhist schools. If you’re going to try and worry us about what is lost in “Buddhism and science,” when are you going to try and worry us about what is lost in Tiantai?
Thill said:
Another excellent post conducive to thinking rather than the somnolence one has to struggle against at conferences!
I am a tenured professor at an American college. I obtained an M.A. and Ph.D. from a prestigious university in Canada. For over twenty years, I have taught at diverse institutions of higher education in Canada and the U.S. I have also presented papers at conferences nationally and internationally during this time.
I can, therefore, make a justified to claim to being in a good position to understand and evaluate a scholar’s merit and potential.
If you are reading this blog and looking to hire someone in the area of Asian Religions/Philosophy, I would urge you to seriously consider hiring Dr. Amod Lele. His numerous posts on this blog offer sufficient evidence of the diversity and depth of his interests and reflections and his merit, mettle, and potential as an original scholar and thinker in the field of Buddhism and related areas.
I have no hesitation in declaring that Dr. Amod Lele will considerably raise the profile of any department of religious studies which is fortunate to hire him.
Amod Lele said:
Thill, thank you for the warm letter of reference! I have currently applied for a couple of adjunct positions at posh local universities, which would be a nice thing to do on the side. I’m pretty happy with my life in the Boston area and wouldn’t want to leave to take the kind of TT positions that I might actually have a shot at. But to return to the current post: it is no coincidence that I started the blog at exactly the point when I had decided to stop pursuing faculty teaching as my main career option. If I were still looking for a TT job, I would never dream of posting anything like this. Lopez is too prominent, too well regarded, too well connected in the field; even to criticize him in a painstakingly researched book or article would be politically dangerous, risking the dismissal of my application by search committees too sympathetic to his perspective. But now, outside of the faculty meat grinder, I am free. I can say things that need to be said about the prevailing trends in Buddhist studies, without fear of career repercussions. It’s a great feeling.
Jabali108 said:
Is Buddhism consistent with cronyism in the field of scholarship?
JimWilton said:
I agree. This is a very thoughtful post and a skillful analysis and deconstruction of Mr. Lopez’ argument.
However, your view of Buddha nature is not consistent with my understanding of Mahayana schools — lineages that originate in India rather than China. Buddha nature is not a concept of permanence or existence. It is not existence. Neither is it non-existence.
And, since Theravadin schools have a concept of enlightenment that is free from the cycle of samsara (i.e. an enlightenment that is not created but revealed when obscurations are removed), the concept of buddha nature or basic goodness (goodness that is not dualistic or contrasted with evil) is consistent with South Asian lineages.
Amod Lele said:
Jim, I don’t think that’s quite an accurate characterization of Theravāda when we’re speaking precisely. The Buddha of the Pali suttas is notoriously cagey about nirvana, treating it as something very difficult to speak of – so while it is not created, neither is it revealed. It may be that every living being has the potential to reach liberation (even though the texts strongly suggest that not every being has the potential to reach buddhahood). But even so, that’s so only in the sense of possibilities available – every being has the potential of eventually becoming liberated, but every being also has the potential of being reborn as a chicken, which is probably easier than the difficult possibility of liberation, and far, far more likely than the incredibly rare event of buddhahood. To the extent that we can speak of buddha-nature in Theravāda, we could far more easily speak of chicken-nature.
Beyond that point, though, it’s not just Buddha nature per se that I find suspicious about Tiantai. I will admit to not being very well versed in Tiantai, and I could easily be wrong on this, but my understanding is that Tiantai finds some sort of enduring nature even in nonsensient material things – in Tiantai the material world around us is really not characterized by avidyā, anitya or duḥkha.
JimWilton said:
You are correct and your precision is appreciated. But you will find the same caginess in Mahayana schools when they discuss Buddha nature. So while there is a clear difference in approach, I don’t see an inconsistency.
Thill said:
“It may be that every living being has the potential to reach liberation (even though the texts strongly suggest that not every being has the potential to reach buddhahood).”
How can bacteria, insects, plants, and animals “reach liberation” since they cannot possibly understand the goal or the means to it?
Hence, early Buddhism plausibly accorded a privileged status to human beings in this respect.
elisa freschi said:
Dear Amod,
I have been considering the problem of “honest” reviews a lot in the last few weeks (they are badly needed in order to improve the research, but usually one just reads a priori positive or negative reviews, according to “political” concerns). After a last post about this topic, I read your review and I am now wondering whether we have to imagine a subsidiarity between academically structured and non-structured researchers “proding” each other.
Here is the post I dedicated to this latter point (and to your “harsh” review —about which I had to be “harsh” myself).
Thill said:
It strikes me that the doctrine of innate Buddha nature, the doctrine that all sentient beings are inherently enlightened beings, and so on is nothing but old Vedantic wine in exotically designed Buddhist bottles.
What is the difference between saying that everything is Brahman, or that the Atman is the real self of all beings, and saying (as in Tientai or Tendai Buddhism) that all things have an inherent Buddha nature and that all beings are inherently enlightened? These claims only differ in the words they use to make the same point.
Both sets of claims are immediately undermined by the characteristics of ignorance, egoism or self-interested behavior, and lack of compassion one finds in all sentient beings.
If the lion has an inherent Buddha nature and is already “enlightened”, why does it torment and devour the deer? Why does it behave in violent and cruel ways toward other lions?
What was going on with Stalin and Hitler? What happened to their “inherent Buddha nature”?
JimWilton said:
Tyrants and evil doers rationalize their actions. In Shakespeare’s play, even Richard III justifies his actions because the unfairness of his situation that has caused the “winter of our discontent”. The need to defend and rationalize wrong doing indicates both that (i) evil and wrongdoing is not intrinsic but is something that we must be talked into, and (ii) even in the midst of this confusion there is a wisdom quality that sees wrongdoing as error. The exceptions to this would be psychotics whose confusion is indisputable or, in your example, animals governed by instinct (habit) — which is a profound form of ignorance.
By contrast, kindness and compassion need no rationale or justification.
A sentient being and a buddha both experience impermanence and egolessness. The difference (really the only difference) is that the sentient being grasps onto the concept of self and experiences fear when confronted with change and the lack of solidity of self. Fear results in coping mechanisms — aggression, desire and ignorance. Through these coping mechanisms a sentient being solidifies and forms a relationship with other — and that in turn seems to confirm that self exists (or, in the case of ignorance, the source of fear is simply ignored). But the coping mechanisms do not really work. The sense of self that is created in this way is conditioned and caused by other. And, because the condition of the existence of other and the relationship with other is impermanent, the experience of impermanence and egolessness cannot be avoided for long and fear returns.
michael reidy said:
I have always thought of Buddhists as rocket-scientists at prayer. Seriously, could all this be an instance of a reaction to Orientalism, ‘you do the non-rational, that’s your speciality, let us handle the day to day mundane reality’. One can see the same sort of thing working in *Hinduism with Quantum uncertainty underwriting Maya and weapons in the Mahabharata being the prevision of ICBMs.
The other way to go in reaction is deeper into non-rationality, one thinks of the modern revival of Ganesha. Different strokes.
Thill said:
“Buddhism should be a tradition that teaches us important, provocative and potentially true ideas about the nature of reality…”
“Should” does not imply “is”. The important issue is whether Buddhism actually teaches us “important, provocative and potentially true ideas about the nature of reality”.
But I don’t know what “potentially true” means. Either a claim is true, or it isn’t, or the question of its truth or falsity does not arise at all.
Has Buddhism arrived at any true ideas about the nature of reality which are at the same time important and provocative? What are they?
Is there any single theory of reality which can be viewed as representative of Buddhism as such?
No sooner than one has asked this question, another more serious question raises its head: Given that Madhyamika Buddhism asserts that reality is “emptiness”, that “form is emptiness”, and so on, does it even make sense to speak of “the nature of reality” in Buddhism?
The Madhyamika Buddhist theory seems incoherent at the outset. It purports to deny that reality has any inherent, intrinsic, and essential nature and in the same breath asserts that “emptiness” is the nature of reality.
Stating that “emptiness” refers to “impermanence” and “interdependence” does not get the Madhyamika Buddhist theory out of this incoherence since the statement implies that impermanence and dependent origination constitute the inherent nature of reality.
Thus, the Madhyamika must abandon either A or B on pain of incoherence:
A. Reality has no inherent nature.
B. Reality is “empty”, i.e., impermanent and subject to dependent origination.
The Madhyamika also ought to pause and reflect on the implications of her use of the word “reality” in the first place. What does it mean?
Anyway, the Madhyamika espousal of (A) clearly makes it inconsistent with science. Science has given us a great deal of knowledge of reality and its essential nature. It presupposes that reality is uniform in its nature and that objects, events, and phenomena have natures or structures and obey natural laws which can be understood in terms of mathematical representations.
Science has shown us that water has an essential nature: H2O.
Science also shown us that heat has an essential nature: molecular motion.
So, any Buddhist theory, e.g., Madhyamika, which denies that phenomena have an essential or inherent nature would be inconsistent with science.
If the denial of essential or inherent nature is the hallmark (essential nature????) of any Buddhist account of reality, then Buddhism is inconsistent with science.
JimWilton said:
Apropos of reality, there is a great old joke (early to mid 20th Century according to my brother the etymologist):
Three baseball umpires were arguing about who was best at calling balls and strikes. The first one said: “I call ’em as I see ’em; no one can do better that that.” The second said, “That’s nothing; I call ’em as they are.” The third said, “They ain’t nothin’ ’till I call ’em, and then that’s what they are.
jabali108 said:
Apropos of reality: “A rose by any other name would smell just the same!”
Neocarvaka said:
“Science has shown us that water has an essential nature: H2O.
Science has also shown us that heat has an essential nature: molecular motion.
So, any Buddhist theory, e.g., Madhyamika, which denies that phenomena have an essential or inherent nature would be inconsistent with science.”
One should also conclude that the Madhyamika theory is false and that if the denial of inherent nature or essence is central to any Buddhist account of reality, then Buddhism is false.
Jabali108 said:
“animals governed by instinct (habit) — which is a profound form of ignorance.”
How can this form of ignorance coexist with an inherent “buddha nature” or inborn enlightenment?
But we have to return to the fundamental question here:
What does it mean to say that all beings have an inborn “buddha nature” or enlightened mind?
Unless we are clear about the meaning of the claim, we can’t proceed further in our inquiry.
“A sentient being and a buddha both experience impermanence and egolessness.”
Do animals have a concept of impermanence? If they don’t, then they can experience or undergo impermanence without recognition of it.
But the notion of anyone experiencing “egolessness” is an incoherent one. So, even a “buddha” cannot have that experience.
Ethan Mills said:
As a plucky young undergrad I wrote an honors thesis called “Buddhism and Science: A Comparison of Methods.” While this was hardly a work of mature scholarship, it was obvious to me at the time that comparing two things as vast as “Buddhism” and “science” is pretty much meaningless unless you narrow it down. I narrowed it down to a particular characterization of experimental methods and Vipassana meditation. I think I was able to say some interesting (“interesting” to me, anyway!) things about the role of observation in both methods and I think it was worth thinking about even if it wasn’t terribly conclusive. I haven’t gotten to Lopez’s book yet, but I’d say that thinking about “Buddhism and science” *could* be worthwhile as long as it’s done carefully and without all the New Age bullshit, hasty equivocations, and shallow understandings that sadly tend to dominate such comparisons.
neocarvaka said:
Observation also plays an important role in all of the pseudo-sciences, but obviously this does not make them consistent with science.
The hypotheses generated on the basis of observations, the methods of testing those hypotheses, and the kinds of revisions made in light of evidence determine whether a system of belief is scientific or consistent with science.
Thill said:
Quantum mechanics rule ‘bent’ in classic experiment
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13626587
I just read this piece online on the BBC news website. The experiment has undermined the “complementarity” principle and has significant epistemological implications.
I found Prof. Steinberg’s comment on the importance of the use of natural language in describing quantum realities interesting:
“For his part, Professor Steinberg believes that the result reduces a limitation not on quantum physics but on physicists themselves.
“I feel like we’re starting to pull back a veil on what nature really is,” he said.
“The trouble with quantum mechanics is that while we’ve learned to calculate the outcomes of all sorts of experiments, we’ve lost much of our ability to describe what is really happening in any natural language.
“I think that this has really hampered our ability to make progress, to come up with new ideas and see intuitively how new systems ought to behave.”
Kohl said:
Buddhism and Science
There is a big difference between Asia and the West.
The more Buddhism in known in the West the bigger is
this difference.
Asian buddhism is interested in the dialogue between
Buddhism and science. Since long time.
Western Buddhism less.
Western Buddhists might learn from Asia.
Christian Thomas Kohl
http://ctkohl.googlepages.com
Christian Thomas Kohl
andrew said:
Amod, this is brilliant. thank you.
Jayarava said:
Is the identification between the ideas or methods of Buddhism, and with the ideas or methods of science? Or is it compatibility of results? Is the identification general or specific – is all Buddhism compatible with all science? The subject is pretty broad. I mean, is all science compatible with all other science even? Obviously it is not – Quantum mechanics is not compatible with General relativity for instance.
Perhaps there are better questions to ask? In what ways is Buddhism compatible with science? And how has this changed over time? What does the rhetoric surrounding Buddhism’s relationship to science tell us about Buddhists?
If you are interested, I had a go at demolishing the supposed link between Buddhism and Quantum Mechanics a while back in an essay called “Erwin Schrödinger Didn’t Have a Cat” http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2010/10/erwin-schrodinger-didnt-have-cat.html
neocarvaka said:
“I mean, is all science compatible with all other science even? Obviously it is not – Quantum mechanics is not compatible with General relativity for instance.”
It’s more a question of the breakdown of general relativity, or its inapplicability, in the realm of “singularities” and the claims of quantum mechanics to explain that realm adequately.
Neocarvaka said:
We know what the central truths and methods of science are. What are the central claims and methods of what you call “Buddhism”?
Kohl said:
The central question of Buddhism and Science is the question:
What is reality?
http://christianthomaskohl.googlepages.com
Neocarvaka said:
Voodoo metaphysics is also a theory of reality and presupposes the question “What is Reality?”.
Ok, so what is the “Buddhist” answer? And what is it based on?
But you might want to think about the fact that the four noble truths don’t raise that question at all and hence provide no answers to it. The focus is on suffering, not “Reality”.
Thill said:
“the four noble truths don’t raise that question at all and hence provide no answers to it. The focus is on suffering, not “Reality”.”
But the second noble truth suggests that reality is at least characterized by causal and dependence relations among its constituents.
Here’s another question which reflection on the four noble truths gives rise to: What must reality be like if both suffering and liberation from it occur within its folds?
Since suffering is caused by desire, reality must be such that there is no “pre-established harmony” between our desires and reality and that reality can be incompatible with our desires. This implies that reality must be independent of our desires, and, hence, also independent of the constituents of desire such as thought, feeling, etc.
So, the first and second noble truths imply and echo commonsense realism, i.e., that reality is independent of our desires, thoughts, and feelings. Thus, any form of idealism which makes reality dependent on our desires, thoughts, and feelings is inconsistent with the first and second noble truths! Hence, idealism is not a truly Buddhist teaching! LOL
The second,third, and the fourth noble truths suggest that reality must have a causal and dependence-relations structure which can be understood by human reason. If suffering and desire can be understood and overcome, then the reality within whose folds this occurs must be intelligible or comprehensible to human reason.
This import of the four noble truths resonates well with Einstein’s astonishment that reality is comprehensible by human reason.
So, as I have pointed out in other posts, skepticism and any denigration of the ability of human reason to comprehend reality are inconsistent with the four noble truths.
Thus, the four noble truths and science converge in on this most important feature of reality and the relation of human reason to it.
Kohl said:
http://themetaphysicalfoundationsofbuddhism.blogspot.com/