BUDDHISM AND QUANTUM PHYSICS.pdf

BUDDHISM AND QUANTUM PHYSICS

A strange parallelism of two concepts

of reality

Christian Thomas Kohl

Rudyard Kipling, the famous English author of The Jungle Book, born in India, wrote one

day these words: ‘Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet’. In my

paper I show that Kipling was not completely right. I try to show the common ground

between Buddhist philosophy and quantum physics. There is a surprising parallelism

between the philosophical concept of reality articulated by N¯ g¯ rjuna and the physical

concept of reality implied by quantum physics. For neither is there a fundamental core to

reality; rather, reality consists of systems of interacting objects. Such concepts of reality

cannot be reconciled with the substantial, subjective, holistic or instrumentalistic

concepts of reality that underlie modern modes of thought.

N¯g¯rjuna’s concept of reality

N¯ g¯ rjuna was the most signiﬁcant Buddhist philosopher of India.

According to Etienne Lamotte he lived in the second part of the third century

after Christ (Lamotte 1949 – 1980, Tome III, IX). His philosophy is of great topical

interest. Right to this day it determines the thinking of all the traditions of Tibetan

Buddhism. We have no assured biographical knowledge about him, other than

various legends that I will not enter into here. The authenticity of 13 of his works is

nevertheless regarded as established by the scholastic research. The Danish

scholar Ch. Lindtner was particularly concerned with the examination and

translation of these 13 works (Lindtner 2002). N¯ g¯ rjuna’s main work,

Mulamadhyamaka-karika (MMK), is translated into German, English, French and

other European languages (Kalupahana 1999; Garﬁeld 1996). N¯ g¯ rjuna is the

founder of the philosophical school Madhyamaka oder Middle Way. The Middle

Way indicates a spiritual and philosophical path that aspires to avoid extreme

metaphysical concepts, particularly the concepts of substantial and subjective

thinking in their various forms. In his main work (MMK), the Middle Way is

described as follows: 24.18 ‘What arises dependently [pratityasamutpada]

Contemporary Buddhism, Vol. 8, No. 1, May 2007

ISSN 1463-9947 print/1476-7953 online/07/010069-82

q 2007 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/14639940701295328

70 CHRISTIAN THOMAS KOHL

is pronounced to be substancelessness [sunyata]. This is nothing but a dependent

concept [prajnapti]. Substancelessness [sunyata] constitutes the middle way’

(chapter 24, verse 18).

N¯ g¯ rjuna’s philosophy consists principally of two aspects. The ﬁrst aspect is

an exposition of a concept of reality (sunyata, pratityasamutpada), according to

which fundamental reality has no ﬁrm core and does not consist of independent,

substantial components but of two-body-systems—of material or immaterial

bodies that reciprocally affect each other. This concept of reality is diametrically

opposed to one of the key concepts of traditional Indian metaphysics: ‘svabhava’

or ‘own being’. The second aspect is an answer to the inner contradictions of four

extreme concepts of reality that are not exhaustively presented but only indicated

in principle. Nevertheless, it is easy to recognize the systems of thought to which

these indications relate. This is important as it is from this recognition that we can

identify those aspects of our extreme metaphysical positions that make it

impossible for us to recognize the nature of reality. This is not only a debate within

the traditional metaphysics of India. I relate these four extreme propositions to the

substantial, subjective, holistic and instrumentalist modes of thought found in the

modern world. In order to effectively undermine these modes of thought, one ﬁrst

has to recognize them as such. Therefore, without any claim to completeness, I will

give a brief outline of these four modes of thought:

(1) Substantialism. Substance is something that has independent existence

(Webster’s New World Dictionary, New York, 1968). In Europe, substantialism is

at the centre of traditional metaphysics, beginning with pre-Socratic

philosophers (such as Parmenides and Heraclitus, two critics of substantial

thought) through Plato, up to Immanuel Kant. According to traditional

metaphysics, substance or own being is something that has independent

existence, something unchangeable, eternal and existing by itself. Substance is

the underlying basis for everything else, the non-material foundation of the

world in which we live. Plato made a distinction between two forms of being.

Particularly in the second part of his ‘Parmenides’ he distinguished between, on

the one hand, singular objects, which exist exclusively through participation and

in so far as this is the case they have no own being, and on the other hand ideas

that do have an own being. Traditional metaphysics adopted this dualism from

Plato. An independent own being is characterized in traditional metaphysics as

something that, as an existing thing, is not dependent on anything else

(Descartes), existing by itself, subsisting through itself (More), which is

completely unlimited by others and free from any kind of foreign command

(Spinoza), and exists of itself without anything else (Schelling). In traditional

metaphysics, the highest substance was often understood as God or as a divine

being. Since Kant’s so called ‘Copernican revolution’, the primary question of

philosophy is no longer to know reality, but rather to know mind or the source of

perception and knowledge. For this reason the traditional metaphysics has lost

ground in the modern world. In fact, the central concepts of the traditional

BUDDHISM AND QUANTUM PHYSICS 71

metaphysics such as being, substance, reality, essence, and so forth, had been

replaced by the reductionist modes of thought of modern sciences. Now atoms,

elementary particles, energy, ﬁelds of force, lows of nature, and so on, are seen

as the fundamental ground for everything else.

(2) Subjectivism. By subjectivist modes of thought I understand the turning of

attention to the subject that resulted from the changes created by Ren´

Descartes. According to this doctrine, consciousness is that which is primarily

existent, and everything else is merely content or a form or a creation of that

consciousness. The high point of this kind of subjectivism is represented by the

idealism of Berkeley. The ideas of Kant can be considered as a moderated

subjectivism or idealism. Since Ren ´ Descartes, subjectivity or self-awareness has

become the fulcrum for modern philosophical thought lending evidential proof

and certainty of reality. This view has been continually brought into doubt by

the modern physical sciences; however, these doubts have not led to a new and

complementary concept of reality but to a calamitous separation between

philosophy and the modern physical sciences. It has served only to sharpen that

dualism that preoccupies modern thought. According to the physicist P.C.W.

Davies (1986), electrons, photons or atoms do not exist, they are nothing but

models of thought.

(3) Holism. This is the view that an organic or integrated whole has a reality

independent of and greater than the sum of its parts (Webster’s Dictionary, New

York, 1968). This third approach tries to avoid the calamitous either – or scheme

of the ﬁrst two approaches by fusing subject and object into one whole, such

that there are no longer any parts but only one identity: all is one. That whole is

made absolute and is mystiﬁed. It becomes an independent unity that exists

without dependence on its parts. Wholeness is understood as something

concrete, as if it were an object of experience. As a philosophical approach

found in great periods of European history of philosophy, this view is connected

with names like Thomas Aquinas, Leibniz, Schelling. In quantum physics, holism

is represented by David Bohm. 1

(4) Instrumentalism. The fourth approach consists of refuting or ignoring the

existence of subject and object. Instead of favouring either one or the other

or the two together, this metaphysical approach refutes them both. The

search for reality is according to this viewpoint insigniﬁcant or meaningless.

Instrumentalism is very modern, intelligent (e.g., in the person of Ernst

Cassirer), and sometimes somewhat captious. It is difﬁcult to disengage from

it. As an extension of subjectivism it consists of regarding thinking as

thinking in models, which is regarded as a working with information without

concern as to what phenomena the information is about. It inherits this

problem from subjectivism, about which the philosopher Donald Davidson

wrote: ‘Once one makes the decision for the Cartesian approach, it seems

that one is unable to indicate what ones proofs are evidence for’ (1988, 90).

Instrumentalism is a collective term that denotes a variety of scientiﬁc

approaches. They have the common feature of considering the totality

72 CHRISTIAN THOMAS KOHL

of human knowledge, including scientiﬁc constructs, statements and

theories, as not at all or sometimes merely not primarily, realistic

reproductions of the structure of reality. Rather it considers them to be

the result of humans’ interactions with nature for the purpose of

establishing theoretically and practically successful models. For instrument-

alism theories are not a description of the world but are an instrument for a

systematic classiﬁcation and explanation of observations and for the

predictions of facts. The instrumentalist approach is outlined by the

experimental physicist Anton Zeilinger. Zeilinger stated in an interview:

‘In classical physics we speak of a world of things that exists somewhere

outside and we describe their nature. In quantum physics we have learned

that we have to be very careful about this. Ultimately physical sciences are

not sciences of nature but sciences of statements about nature. Nature in

itself is always a construction of mind. Niels Bohr once put it like this: There

is no world of quantum, there is only a quantum mechanical desciption’. 2

N¯ g¯ rjuna presents these four extreme concepts of reality in a scheme

that is in Sanskrit called catuskoti and in Greek tetralemma. In a short form

they can be expressed as follows—Things do not arise substantially: 1. either

out of themselves, 2. nor out of something else, 3. nor out of both, 4. nor

without a cause. Behind this scheme there are, as mentioned before, four

concepts of reality that can be related to substantial, subjective, holistic and

instrumentalist modes of thought in the modern world. It would be difﬁcult to

ﬁnd a modern person who does not, in his own way, hold one of these four

extreme views. This shows that N¯ g¯ rjuna’s philosophy is very up to date.

N¯ g¯ rjuna did not (1) refute the substantial modes of thought in order to end

up in (2) subjectivism, even though this is often claimed against him. Nor did

he refute the either – or mode of thought in order to end with a view of (3)

holism, identity, or wholeness, which some benevolent interpreters say of him.

Nor did he refute holism in order to end up at (4) instrumentalism, as is

believed by many modern interpreters in imitation of the philosopher Ludwig

Wittgenstein. N¯ g¯ rjuna does not fall into any of these extremes because

these are the exact four extreme metaphysical concepts that he systematically

refutes.

Already in the very ﬁrst verse of the MMK, he points out not only the

dilemma but the whole tetralemma of our thinking. That verse states: ‘Neither

from itself nor from another, nor from both, nor without a cause does anything

whatever anywhere arises’ (Garﬁeld’s translation). This verse can be understood as

the principal statement of the MMK: the refutation of the four extreme

metaphysical views, which cannot be reconciled with the dependent arising of

things. If this is the case, the remainder of the MMK would be merely a clariﬁcation

of this ﬁrst verse. Therefore this requires careful examination. What is the assertion

made by this verse? That nothing can be found; that there is nothing; that nothing

exists? Was N ¯ g ¯ rjuna denying the external world? Did he wish to refute that

BUDDHISM AND QUANTUM PHYSICS 73

which evidently is? Did he want to call into question the world in which we live?

Did he wish to deny the presence everywhere of things that somehow arise? If by

‘arise’ we understand the notion of the empirical arising of things, then we are

obliged to argue that if a thing does not arise out of itself, it must arise out of

something else. So we should ask: what is the signiﬁcance of the concept ‘to

arise’?

In another text, N¯ g¯ rjuna himself gives some indication of how to

understand this concept. He writes in his work Yuktisastika: ‘19. That which has

arisen dependently on this and that that has not arisen substantially

[svabhavatah]. What has not arisen substantially, how can it literally [nama] be

called “arisen”?’. ‘That which originates due to a cause and does not abide without

[certain] conditions but disappears when the conditions are absent, how can it be

understood as “to exist”?’ (Lindtner 2002, 109, 113). By the concepts of ‘arising’ and

‘exist’ N¯ g¯ rjuna does not mean the empirical but the substantial arising or

existence. When in many other passages of the MMK N¯ g¯ rjuna states that things

do not arise (MMK 7.29), they do not exist (MMK 3.7, MMK 5.8, MMK 14.6), they are

not to be found (MMK 2.25, MMK 9.11), they are not (MMK 15.10), they are unreal

(MMK 13.1), then clearly this has the meaning: Things do not arise substantially,

they do not exist out of themselves, their independence cannot be found, they are

dependent and in this sense they are substantially unreal. N ¯ g ¯ rjuna only refutes

the idea of a substantial arising of things, of an absolute and independent

existence. He does not refute the empirical existence of things. This is what he is

explaining when he states: ‘MMK 15.10 “It exists” implies grasping after eternity.

“It does not exist” implies the philosophy of annihilation. Therefore, a discerning

person should not decide on either existence or non-existence’. For N¯ g¯ rjuna the

expression ‘to exist’ has the meaning ‘to exist substantially’. His issue is not the

empirical existence of things, but the idea of a permanent thing and of things

having a substance. Only the idea of an own being, without dependence to

something else, is refuted by N¯ g¯ rjuna. Things do not arise out of themselves,

they do not exist absolutely, their permanent being is not to be found, they are

not independent but they are dependently arising.

The many interpretations of N¯ g¯ rjuna that claim that he is also refuting the

empirical existence of objects are making an inadmissible generalization that

suggests N¯ g¯ rjuna approaches subjectivism or instrumentalism. Such interpret-

ations originate in metaphysical approaches that themselves have a difﬁculty in

recognizing the empirical existence of the presenting data, which is not at all the

case with N¯ g¯ rjuna.

How does N¯ g¯ rjuna present the dependence of phenomena? The starting

point of the MMK is the double nature of phenomena. These fundamental two-

body systems cannot be further analytically divided. The two bodies constitute a

system of two material or immaterial components that complement each other.

One of the components cannot exist without the other one; each forms the

counterpart of the other. In the MMK, N¯ g¯ rjuna concerns himself with such

concrete two-body systems as: a thing and its conditions, a walking person and

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: