Are scientists promoting a delusion?

Christopher Titmuss

Greed, hate and delusion are the three poisons of the mind.
The Buddha

There is a growing interest in a comparative understanding between Buddhism and Science. Books, articles, conferences and retreats are looking into the relationship.
It is as if there is such a thing called Buddhism and another thing called Science. Based on this assumption, the proponents of one view or the other or both engage in dialogue.
But what is Buddhism? Scratch the surface a little, we find it consists of three major traditions: Theravada, Tibetan Mahayana and Zen, as well as less common traditions such as Vajrayana and Pure Land. Scratch a little further, we see there are numerous traditions within each of these traditions. Dig into any sub-division of a tradition, you will see further differences. Take a single strand, such as a lineage, you will see differences between the teachers who teach or follow that lineage. Scratch further, you will notice that a single teacher’s teachings change over the years. In other words, there is no such thing as Buddhism.

The same applies to Science. Scratch Science and you will find different branches, such as chemistry, biology and astronomy. Scratch further you will see a range of views in any particular branch in respected science journals. Scratch further and you will notice the priority of some is different from the priority of others in a particular twig of the branch. Scratch further, you will see that a single scientist changes and adapts his or her views in the passage of time. There is no such thing as science.

The view that Buddhism has much in common with Science rests on a view that both exist and are something. Buddhism and Science depend on our definition of both. The following article is not a comparison of Science with Buddhism but an inquiry into Science.

Science is the God of the Rational Mind

For centuries, scientists have worked hard to establish science as the only valid methodology to know reality through the pursuit of knowledge and on the basis of testing repeatedly its experiments and theories. It is a powerful argument to persuade us of the truth of its approach.

The different branches of science – such as biology, chemistry, physics, and astronomy – approach ‘reality’ from different angles. From the perspective of astronomy and the exploration of the cosmos, life on earth must seem an incidental detail. We are told there are 100 billion stars in our galaxy and there are more galaxies than stars in our galaxy. While biology focuses on the evolution of life on this small planet, thus ignoring the rest of the universe. One branch of science says we are virtually nothing while another branch of science treats homo sapiens as the current fruit of evolution. It all seems to be a matter of perspective. Reality appears one way to one branch of science and another way to another branch. Is science trapped in divergent analysis, deduction and theories?

Science has a legitimate but restricted view on the nature of reality - due to the limitation of the means, tools and resources at its disposal, as well as the condition of the mind. Science moves as much from theory to observation as it is does from observation to theory. One depends upon the other.

All scientific knowledge is provisional, relative to perceived and conditioned circumstance at the time while the application of such knowledge relies on probability, not certainty. There is no truth within science that we can describe as permanently established. Building from previous accumulated knowledge, all scientific positions become subject to change, sometimes very, very gradually or dramatically. Science doesn’t stand still. While a genuine and sound scientific theory emerges out of massive research, scrupulous testing and thoughtful development of a hypothesis, scientists would never claim – to their credit – that they have finally found unshakeable truth.
Furthermore, scientists are unable to offer us a unified theory of reality only a variety of well-researched perspectives. Even if a unified theory was agreed upon it would not make it the truth, but a conceptual construction. Yet science, in general, behaves as it has the only means to reality. Is this a delusion?

Scientific technology also has to stand and be counted in terms of the wilful harmful products it has deliberately unleashed. For example, every weapon produced from a gun to a nuclear bomb depends on science, both theoretical and applied, for its manufacture. The military and the corporate world employ the majority of scientists to

• develop more weapons for the destruction of life,
• conduct countless animal experiments for medical and cosmetic research
• exploit the Earth’s natural resources to produce goods to satisfy the demands of governments, businesses and consumer.
• and engage in more and more research for the surveillance of citizens in every area of our lives.
• Like religion, science is a blessing and a curse. Science is the God of the rational mind. It is the supreme irony that our natural freedom erodes in the name of freedom.

The Known and the Unknown

Scientists constantly desire to enter into the brave new world of research. Governments and commerce have grasped onto nanotechnology. Nanoscientists perceive a whole new military and commercial future for humankind through production of new materials, drugs and goods, via nanotechnology. Nanotechnology, the manipulation of very small-scale matter, a million times smaller than a pinhead, has its risks in terms of health, and safety for people and environment. The inhalation of toxic nanoparticles entering into the blood stream and going to the brain and liver is a serious concern in the short or long term. Scientists of nanotechnology believe this form of science will herald sweeping changes in lifestyle while currently taking little notice of the harmful potential of nanoparticles on organic life. Once again, it is informed pressure groups that force scientists to take into account the ethics of such forms of manipulation of molecules. If scientists can make molecules behave differently, then they believe they will have unlocked another key to determining our future.

Scientists depends totally for their existence on the duality of the known and the unknown and are unable to admit that questions that they raise may be insoluble. There appears to be a real lack of ethical responsibility to devote research to what matters for the genuine welfare of life on Earth. Science has become pathology with research taking off in every conceivable direction, and plenty of it is utterly irrelevant. This pathology is disguised as a virtue. How did the world or the universe begin? How far into space can we go? Is their a parallel universe? What is the origin of species? How to make nuclear and conventional weapons more efficient and more destructive? How to exploit all the remaining resources? There are also millions of scientific experiments on animals – guinea pigs, mice, cats, dogs, rabbits, sheep, cows, monkeys and chimpanzees. It’s cruel and grotesque. All in the name of science.

The data available to science may be small compared to what scientists haven’t realised. It takes only one shift in consciousness, one fresh insight, to question the legitimacy and the morality of a well accepted scientific theory, the methods employed and its expression in applied science.

Are scientists also preoccupied with the search for position and prestige among their peers, credibility in science journals, security of tenure, access to research funds and paying off their mortgage and perhaps private education for their children?

Does self-interest among scientists affect their ethical responsibilities to examine what really matters in the crisis facing our planet?

Yet the determinations and constructions born from theoretical and applied science are certainly impressive. One aeroplane taking off and landing safely confirms scientific knowledge and its application but that expertise doesn’t make science a vehicle to know reality; it confirms science as a means to interpret and modify the material world.

To its credit, also, science knows it does not have the power of exact prediction but can only engage in possibilities or probabilities. For example, 2500 scientists informed the United Nations that it is 90% probable that burning of fossil fuels is causing global warming. One scientist said that the biggest crisis in the last 65 million years on Earth is happening right now. We have to sit up and take notice of such scientific information. This is the core difference between our era and previous apocalyptic fears in human history. The significant factor of uncertainty, as quantum mechanics points out, overshadows well tested theories. We do not know how great a percentage this uncertainty is. It could be enormous.

Huge problems for science remain unanswered. Within the past 10 years, scientists have realised that matter in the universe – you, me, the sun and the moon etc – constitutes only 4% of the cosmos. In September 2006, I listened to a BBC Radio science programme The Cosmic Hunters. Senior astronomers admitted that they remain in the dark about the nature of the universe, that their findings now leave a huge hole in knowledge that scientists do not know how to fill. Scientists refer to this great unknown as dark matter and dark energy. Physics applies to the measurement of matter but matter reveals only a very small percentage of the known universe .So called dark energy and dark matter make up 96% of the universe. Scientists are trying to penetrate this major mystery of the cosmos. And if the mystery is resolved…..?

The only news item on January 8 2007 on the front page of The Independent, a leading British national newspaper, was titled The Universe Gives Up Its Deepest Secret. The story said that scientists were about to unravel the ‘invisible material that makes up most of the cosmos.” “Nobody has seen dark matter or knows what it is made of” said the article.

The metaphors dark and matter seem inappropriate if astronomers can’t detect it through the most powerful telescopes. Surely the non-material is neither dark nor matter. The scientific view at present is that dark matter or dark energy is the scaffolding that holds the visible material cosmos together.

The IncompleteTheory of Evolution

Meanwhile, down on Earth, biological science is also struggling. In recent years, I have been reading science books, some served as an inspiration and for reflection for this article. I bought Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species, the book that inspired the current direction of biological science and I read Darwin’s autobiography written for his family late in his life. Darwin (1809 -1882) was truly an extra-ordinary man – dedicated to science, constantly questioning, adventurous and insightful. We have been blessed with his presence, and benefited enormously from his understanding. He truly tried to make his writings accessible to many people.

You would assume that word evolution appears on every page of the Origin of Species. Not so. I hunted in vain for the word evolution in this book. He made no reference to it in his opus magnum. Darwin continued to make in his life occasional reference to ‘God’ – an uncomfortable truth for hardcore scientists – while wisely distancing himself from religion. In the end he took an agnostic position. “The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic.” (Page 94 of his autobiography).

If there is evolution then there is devolution, stagnation and regression. One perspective cannot exist without the other - unless the word evolution is only another word for change,” for impermanence, for arising and passing.

How on earth did changes emerge over the 4.5 billion years of our history that enabled sentient life to emerge? How did dead matter make the transition to consciousness? It is simply beyond science to create sentient life from insentient matter. Science only confirms our innocence, if not naivety, as creatures on this earth in terms of understanding such a process of change.

We then look at biology. I experience major concerns about the theory of evolution.

1. Does the Darwinian theory of natural selection primarily determine our behaviour?
2. Is our desire to reproduce and consequently propagate inheritable characteristics our primary driving force?
3. Do the habits of greed, hate and delusion serve Darwin’s theories or challenge them?
4. Why are there physical and mental attributes of sentient beings that show no advantage for survival, competition or increase in numbers?
5. Does natural selection preserve what is useful and eliminate what is harmful?
6. Does the theory of evolution imply biological determinism?
7. Are we to conclude from the theory of evolution that all forms of changing life serve merely as functional utilities?
8. Is chance and necessity, two features of the theory, really an integral part of the evolutionary process?
9. How can chance and necessity co-exist in the same theory?
10. Is competition between species and within a species an all pervasive fact or interpretative view?
11. Is the view of ‘random selection’ an objective reality or revealing blind spots in scientific research?
12. Is the notion of “progress” a Victorian and contemporary shadow permeating the theory of evolution?

Darwin wrote that the “fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeeded in adapting to their environment.”

Are mosquitoes, beetles, monkeys and humans, as well as the variety of viruses, simply survivors? Are we, homo sapiens, merely survivors?
Why do scientists ignore feelings in their view of reality, such as a mother’s love for her offspring?
What is the place of love among sentient beings and between them?
Why do scientists regard feelings and emotional life as a projection?
Why do theoretical scientists claim that reality can only be known through the intellect and that their feelings must be suppressed?

Our first hand experience and personal insights may reveal to us a radically different sense of reality from the scientist. We can experience a wide variety of circumstances, inner and outer, that affect the movement and expression of our life. Darwinists take up a biological view based on what material they have selected to form the view. Sadly scientists encourage us to rely on science instead of our direct observation and insight into our own experience of what is reality. We have the power of consciousness and the capacity to use it to penetrate into seeing things as they are.

Science has generally relegated consciousness to a side issue; hence we find little or no reference to consciousness in scientific text books. Are scientists also deluding themselves and deluding society in trying to explain life and explain reality while ignoring the significance of consciousness.

It would be a useful start for scientists always to speak from the first person: “I see that….” “I have concluded that….” “My view is….” “As a scientist, I perceive…” It would put an end to the impression that scientists know an objective reality. There are a small number of scientists who express such humility through talking in the first person.

Scientists rely on knowledge. How did language develop from non-language? How is knowledge processed? If all knowledge is an abstraction from reality, then how can the abstraction be the means to know reality and reveal it? Knowledge obviously depends on consciousness. There is no scientific explanation enabling us to comprehend consciousness, nor any possible methodology to reproduce it, even in the most ideal laboratory settings. It means that science cannot explain the means, namely consciousness, to know reality. Then how can it explain reality?

Every new discovery makes it even more self evident that our explanations about life and the universe, its origins and long history are all interesting perspectives. Does the size of our brain, the limits to rationalism and the prevailing scientific orthodoxy cripple the opportunity for scientists to see and know things as they really are?

Everything is contingent upon everything else There are no rules in so-called evolution. Every species arises through a variety of particular and complex factors, rather than simply adaptive processes – the view that Darwinists advocate. So-called evolution does not show any coherent direction, nor is it random. From a dharma perspective, there is no truth to the theory of random selection of species, there is nothing remotely chance about what arises. Scientists simply cannot see the causal chains that bring about events. There is an incredible complexity to the conditions for what arises.

Darwin concluded that species compete with each other and among themselves for survival in any given environment. Are biologists implying that we are fundamentally selfish due to our genes? If not, what is their view? The power of love, of selflessness, of non-competition, of co-operation, receives little attention from scientists. We also have to be willing to acknowledge the power of consciousness. We have adopted the ideology of science while singularly failing to adapt to our environment. The contemporary combination of science and human behaviour continues to make us unfit for adaptation to life on Earth. It is not a matter of survival of the fittest, as Darwinians argue, but what it means to wake up to the way things are. There are more important issues in life than adherence to science and Charles Darwin, even though we have much to learn from his writings.

Western Buddhists, romantically inclined philosophers and those who adopt a spiritual view of life often identify with a view that fundamentally we all live in harmony - as if harmony underlies conflict. Rightly, Darwin challenges this belief with his theory of the competition for survival within a species and between different species. It seems to me the Buddhist view and the Darwinian views converge on matters of conflict and diverge on matters of harmony.

If harmony was true reality, then how on earth could harmony become competition? If competition was true reality, then how come we can experience a sense of harmony as true reality? Clinging to notions that life is harmonious or a struggle for survival reveals two perspectives in the field of causation. The contemporary ideology of “Oneness,” so fashionable among the spiritual, liberal and new age establishment, has nothing to do with truth but merely an adherence to a spiritual view of life. It is the contemporary ideology of our time fashionable among some adherents to spiritual and scientific standpoints.

Reductionism and Disillusionment

There are the relative scientific insights of celebrated reductionists such as Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Einstein, Watson and Crick (the discoverers of DNA in 1953). Isn’t scientific reductionism just another perspective? Once again, we identify with these perspectives as if they offered us true reality.

In physics, scientists direct underground tests costing billions of Euros to force sub-atomic particles to crash into each other to see what ‘reality’, if any, lies behind quarks and electrons. Are there even smaller particles? Beliefs in reductionism tell us about an interpretation of life from a narrowly defined perspective. Let me point out here that I am not disputing the presence of sub-atomic particles but only showing the mind is grasping onto particular phenomena as the basis of reality. Such phenomena are another minor detail from another standpoint.

Yet each theory in every branch of science, no matter how well researched, gives rise to the development, change or even abandonment of the theory. With characteristic humility, Einstein said his theory of relativity will have to yield to another theory. After his discovery of his theory, he spent years trying to discover a new theory to supersede the one he discovered. Perhaps the serious layperson has to turn away from science as a means to resolving life’s great questions.

Religion is not much help at all. Generally, the standpoints of the religions born in the Middle East, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, are offered as the only alternative view to Science. In an article on evolution in the National Geographic magazine (November 2004), Gallup Poll reported that 45% of USA citizens agreed that God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so. The magazine informed its readers that the figure of 45% of such believers has barely changed in two decades

The magazine also stated: Only 12% of Americans believed that humans evolved from other life forms without involvement of a God.

This shows the power of religious conditioning. Millions upon millions of well educated people prefer the most bizarre, incomprehensible and utterly unfounded religious beliefs to the vast body of supportive evidence to a thoroughly researched scientific theory. Yet evidence, and the capacity to repeat the same experiment with the same outcome, is not confirmation of reality only an agreed interpretation of selected phenomena.

There are warning signals about a public crisis of confidence in science. The Higher Education Funding Council for England said that applications for degree courses in chemistry, physics, mathematics and engineering had fallen by as much as 30% in recent years, with 10 universities closing chemistry departments for lack of demand. Many young people consider science as far too abstract, emotionally cold and obtuse; they prefer psychology, philosophy religion and global issues.

The ideology that that only blind indifference of DNA exists in a cold universe dependent on rationalism to determine reality fails to inspire many people. If we are only acting out our DNA, then we need to live with blind indifference to express our true nature. Scientists need to go a lot deeper than a position that genetic replication constitute our true being.

If there is only DNA as the basis, then there is no progress, development and evolution. Evolution is merely an abstraction, an interpretation of appearances out of the DNA. Are homo sapiens an abstraction? If so, then so is evolution. Science can’t have it both ways.

Medical Science

Through the great discoveries of medical science, we have much to be grateful for. Countless millions of lives benefit from medical science. The cocktail of drugs issued to patients has a different impact on different people. Yet, we must be clear that this branch of science, as well all the others, is based on probability. Every mind/body organism copes with the invasion of drugs in different ways. Science cannot measure precisely the risk factor in the prescription of medicine. The greater the number and diversity of tablets the greater the risk to health for certain vulnerable patients. A daily intake of pills can make you very seriously ill! The much applauded science of medicine is also a potential health hazard. Drugs for depression and anxiety can block healing, suppress a process of renewal and numb the inner world or the same drugs can be a vital step in recovery. Who can determine what is appropriate for a person? Trust and probability are cornerstones of science.

One senior physician using contemporary scientific evidence tells a patient to stop taking a particular medicine because he says to keep taking the drug could become life threatening. Another senior physician using the same scientific evidence insists the same patient continues using the same medicine otherwise he will die.

There is also disillusionment with the promises of science in terms of curing the world’s diseases from malaria to cancer, ending of poverty, making resources last and resolving the psychological problems that beset people’s lives. Science offers us tantalising promises about our future, even hints of immortality, but these scientific claims are without evidence. Disease, pain and sickness haunt life everywhere; science is a major cause for such misery in mind and body.

Genetic scientists study hereditary factors and variation in the genes employing questionable methods of research. There is little questioning of the ethics of cloning or genetically modified food while genetic testing of diseases or our potential for them might trigger psychological problems for patients. A genetic test cannot determine the variety of symptoms, how severe they might be or whether any symptoms will develop in the future. There is often an inability to treat a genetic disorder once diagnosed. There is more and more a widespread view that our genes not only determine our appearance but also the way we act. We are gradually being persuaded to believe that our actions in the world fit into the evolutionary theory.

It is now widespread practice to prescribe medication to block out the experience of normal human emotions such as anxiety, stress and worry. Pills have their place in mental health services, but they are vastly over-used. All too often they suppress inner reflection, deny the opportunity for the wise therapy with another, and instead offer a quick fix. There is a disregard for the process of inquiring into the causes and conditions for difficult emotions and transforming them.

Medical scientists serve the interests of powerful drug companies, which see people as consumers. The private and public sector want people back to work or study, making money and spending money, as quickly as possible regardless of the cost to the individual suffering from the stress of increasingly pressured situations at work and at home. Feelings must be anaesthetised to ensure a fast return to the market place. Scientists have excluded feelings from their perception of reality and they are contributing to the same fate for millions of others.

Governments and corporations want people to be functioning machines. Mathematics, economics and the behavioural sciences now shape our lives far more than we realise. We live in a matrix where natural freedom is becoming trapped in a cold substrate of submission to productivity. Corporations and government departments set targets. Managements and workers are treated as numbers, units of productivity and measured by their output. Difficult feelings and emotions must not get in the way of efficiency and profit. The widespread view in our political and economic climate is that self-interest determines human behaviour – due to genetic makeup. (See influential Game Theory – becoming more widely adopted by politicians and business people as the direction for our world). We are all expected to submit to the narrowly conceived ideology of ‘scientific and economic progress.’ Are scientists part of the problem? Are we blinded by science?

Science and the Brain

The science of the brain and the mind also leaves much to be desired. The field of neuroscience includes Buddhist meditation, Western psychology and relationship of the brain to mental states. There are important questions in this area. Science believes in measurement and remains ideologically bound to it. How can science measure the relationship between the mind and the brain?

Is the brain and the mind exactly the same?

Are the brain and the mind different?

If the brain and the mind are exactly the same,
then when the brain changes so must the mind
and when the mind changes so must the brain.
The brain would then become a different physical construct
with every transitory state of mind.

Does the tree know it is the same as wood?

If the brain and the mind are different,
then the brain would never be affected by the state of mind
and the state of mind would never be affected by the brain.

If part of the brain affects the state of mind
and part of the mind affects the brain,
then what part affects what part?

If part of the brain is the mind, then which part of the mind is the brain

and which part of the brain is the mind?
Is consciousness the brain?
If it is, how can it stand outside of it and make reference to it?
If it isn’t the brain, then what is consciousness and where is it?
If part of the consciousness is the brain, then what of it is?
If the other part of consciousness is not the brain, then what part is that?

Strapping a lot of wires to the heads of Buddhist monks in meditation will not provide any answers to these important questions. Science is deluded if it thinks it can.

Scientists focus on an object at the expense of the all-important subject. The subject is called consciousness. Consciousness reveals the object. Science is obsessed with the revealed. It ignores that what makes it possible to reveal. Science cannot examine consciousness since it is not a material object and reveals no obvious characteristics. It cannot be directly located in the brain or body, nor outside of it.

Does science delude itself when it gives the impression of pointing to an objective reality while ignoring the power of human consciousness who believes in objective reality?
Isn’t the perspective of the scientist revealed in every theory?
Is the quest for certainty through scientific knowledge a pointless quest?
Are scientists caught in the spin of trying to make the unknown known with any ultimate resolution?

To claim reality is either subjective (consciousness created) or objective (totally independent of consciousness) is another delusion. Subject and object are inseparable.

The scientist is the product of science and science is the product of the scientist. Science and scientists impose limits on each other. If there is a true reality then neither science, namely the quest for certainty, nor religion that offers certainty through rigid beliefs, can act as the vehicle. If there is Truth, then it means a departure from unfolding knowledge of science or fixed knowledge in religious texts.

The limits to scientific knowledge

Modern science needs to undergo the most radical shake up in its long history. There is a revolution waiting to happen that will eventually bring about the collapse of belief in contemporary science as a vehicle to truth and reality. Science is too tightly constrained a method to know the nature of things while its claims to an objective reality, independent of consciousness, are naïve to the extreme.

Scientific knowledge moves in a restricted circle of the known while hoping to convert the unknown to the known. There is no end to this gap. For science it is a never-ending duality.

For example, we can’t know what percentage are genes and what percentage are cultural and environmental influence making up our personality, values and behaviour. It is a minefield for speculation.

• What is the percentage of influence of our genes upon our lives?
• What is the percentage of influence of cultural, social, and environmental conditioning upon our lives?
• Are we born with latent tendencies?
• Where did these tendencies come from?
• Why are there such huge differences in personality between family members?

Is science out of touch?

A scientist cannot possibly know what percentage of the great panoply of causes and conditions, due to endless number of contingent factors, have been fathomed out. Probability and certainty are not constructs within the nature of things but a human view that arises.

Isn’t it time for science to

• let go of faith in reductionism;
• cut down its preoccupation with the past,
• abandon its theories about the origin of the world,
• question its beliefs around evolution and homo sapiens,
• give up theorising about how life began,
• and admit that this period of Western enlightenment is an arrogant claim?

Then science can give its full attention - in-cooperation with the wise counsel of others -to matters of urgency, namely the skilful application of science to human life, to all sentient beings, to our relationship with each other, natural resources and our environment. Otherwise contemporary scientists themselves are failing to adapt to their environment and are in danger of becoming the dinosaurs of the Earth.

Overall, we have failed to see clearly into the reality of life, via the here and now. We are systematically choking ourselves and countless other sentient beings to death – thanks to science! Science, both theoretical and applied science, sheds some light on our planetary crisis but must take much responsibility for its ill health. Scientists need to dig much deeper than their current remit.

First hand exploration

Science builds on its discoveries and constantly adapts its standpoints. The scientific era is also subject to change, the period of ‘Western enlightenment’ is under threat from within and without. .Not surprisingly, our trust in the state of contemporary science is waning.

We cannot leave the deep questions of life in the hands of unquestioning and irresponsible scientists, nor leave the deep issues in the hands of religion, mystics or philosophers. Science and religion share a dysfunctional relationship while a unified view of science and religion merely serves as yet another perspective offering comfort to those who can’t cope with centuries of conflict of these two institutions. There are more important issues than an integral perspective.

• Does first hand experience bring us closer to reality than research in a laboratory?
• Can we see things as they are through meditation, reflection, action and realisation?
• Can we discover the nature of life through pure contact with our inner and outer world?
• Is consciousness embraced in the field of time or we stand on the edge of the timeless?
• Are awareness, love and wisdom the best instruments for humans to know reality?
• Is reality truly fragmented into the known and the unknown?
• Is there an unshakeable truth?
• Can we realise it?

See www.insightmeditation.org for
Ten Quotes on Religious Beliefs by Charles Darwin
12 pointers to the Religion of Popular Science
12 pointers to the Religion of Secularism