Fri, 31 Oct 2008
Naturalism
I'm going away until Wednesdy evening. It's another Buddhist themed vacation. I'll be mumbling mantras along with a small group of fellow practitioners on the mountaintop at TMC. Yes, it's just been two weeks since I got back from seeing Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche at KTD> I'd prefer to schedule these things further apart, but I have to make do with what's offered.
I've been reading rants by scientists and doctors on the web, mostly directed at homeopathy. This is mostly because I keep track of press articles on homeopathy and the Google news alert thinks certain blogs (but not this one) are news. Anyway, the opinion expressed is that science is the only way to certain knowledge and anything outside of science is either opinion or superstition. Thus yoga and homeopathy are cast aside without any need to examine the facts, that is, whether they actually work. It's easy enough to see that this claim leads to problems. Is the claim "science and the scientific method are the only certain route to knowledge" a scientific statement? If it is not, the statement is self-refuting. If it is not, the claim stands in need of validation. It's the equivalent of lifting oneself up by one's bootstraps.
I've learned this claim has a name—it's called naturalism. I have no problem with naturalism as a purely pragmatic program. Let's try to expand the boundaries of knowledge though science and apply it to different areas and see how far we get. But let's not assume the conclusion before the attempt is completed. It seems to me that there are whole areas of human endeavor where science has not much to offer. Despite the calims of sociobiologists, science has contributed little to our understanding of ethics.
More than that, i think the effort to fit all of human experience on the Procrustean bed of science does violence to the human spirit. More than once people have told me they believe no one ever acts except from a selfish motive. Even seemingly altruistic acts are only done to impress others or oneseelf. It seems to me that this opinion is based on a mechanistic view of behavior. The selfish search for gain is the program that the human computer is running. But to htink this way is to lead a loveless life and blunt the human spirit.
