From: v-nguyen@retina.cis.ohio-state.edu (Viet-Anh V Nguyen)
Subject: Re: [Sci.& Rel.] Khoa-Ho.c & PG
Organization: The Ohio State University Dept. of Computer and Info. Science
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 16:44:03 GMT

From: tran@neep.engr.wisc.edu
>
>Co`n khoa ho.c luo^n luo^n ti`m ca'ch gia?i
>thi'ch cha^n ly' (ne^'u nhu+~ng breakthrough trong khoa ho.c ddu+o+.c
>go.i la` cha^n ly'), va` dda^y chi'nh la` su+. kha'c bie^.t ca(n ba?n giu+~a
>khoa-ho.c va` PG.


Or, as Capra pointed out, religion and science are like yin and yang - one
based on mystical intuition and the other rational thinking.


>Ravi Ravindra, a physicist, nha^.n
>xe't nhu+ sau: "The belief that science is reaching mystical truth is
>based on naive and arrogant assumptions". 


Probably.


>Jeremy Bernstein,
>1 va^.t-ly'-gia chuye^n ve^` particle physics cu~ng coi su+. so sa'nh
>giu+~a nhu+~ng ke^'t qua? va^.t-ly' va` cha^n ly' to^n gia'o nhu+ la`
>"superficial and profoundly misleading", 


Sure, Bernstein might have learned a thing or two from the case of his
teacher's teacher (or J Robert Oppenheimer's case). Oppenheimer, the physicist
who led the Manhattan Project, was known to be fascinated with Eastern mystic-
ism. In an oft-told story, he reached into the Hindu scripture to come up with
a parallel at the moment humankind had its first radioactive mushroom cloud.
In his own words:

      "...I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita:
       Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty 
       and to impress him he takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now
       I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought
       that, one way or another."

He also believed:

      "The general notions about human understanding ... which are illustrated
       by discoveries in atomic physics are not in the nature of things wholly
       unfamiliar, wholly unheard of, or new. Even in our own culture they
       have a history, and in Buddhist and Hindu thought a more considerable
       and central place. What we shall find is an exemplification, an encour-
       agement, and a refinement of old wisdom."

Though brilliant, Oppenheimer was often thought as not living up to his full
potential as a scientist. Why? One of his colleagues, I.I. Rabi, a Nobel lau-
reate, offered an explanation:

      "It seems to me that in some respects Oppenheimer was overeducated
       in those fields which lay outside the scientific tradition, such
       as his interest in religion, in the Hindu religion in particular,
       which resulted in a feeling for the mystery of the universe that
       surrounded him almost like a fog....Some may call it a lack of faith,
       but in my opinion it was more a turning away from the hard, crude
       methods of theoretical physics into a mystical realm of broad intuit-
       ion."
       

>va` John Wheeler dda~
>xe^'p nhu+~ng toan ti'nh tu+o+ng ddo^`ng ho'a va^.t-ly' va` to^n gia'o DDo^ng
>phu+o+ng la` "moonshine, pathological science, and charlatanism".


Actually, in his book A Journey into Gravity and Spacetime, John Archibald
Wheeler himself uses a parallel as an illustration. He explains (in text) [1]:

      "Spacetime, like a great unrolling papyrus scroll with densely
       sprinkled grains of sand glued to it, loaded throughout its
       vastness with microscopic events, the collision of particle
       with particle - or of particle with that bullet of light we
       call a photon..."

And next to it, in the margin, is a picture of a scroll and a caption quoted
from the Koran:

      "We shall roll up the heavens like the rolling up of the scrolls
       by a scribe. As We began the first creation, so shall We repeat
       it.
       Koran, Chapter 21, al-anbiya (103)

Of course, this "charlatan" is also a well-known relativist.


One of the notable objections to any attempt to take these parallels tooo
seriously comes from noone but Murray Gell-Mann himself, who encouraged,
if not started, a trend in the 60's (along which Capra got carried) by 
borrowing a Buddhism term "the eightfold way" [2] to name his particle
classification system. This is what a recent profile of him in Sci Am [3]
has to say about that:

      "...Gell-Mann strove to find order beneath the bewildering variety
       of hadrons springing up in particle accelerators. Hadrons are particles
       subject to the strong nuclear force, which clamps neutrons and protons
       together in the nuclei of atoms. Gell-Mann eventually invented a quan-
       tum property, which he termed strangeness, that accurately predicted
       the behavior of the exotic new hadrons."

And here's the interesting part:

      "Building on this insight, Gell-Mann erected a particle classification
       system that he called the eightfold way, after the Buddhist path to
       enlightment. The term encouraged the notion, popular in the 1960's,
       that particle physics and Eastern mysticism are profoundly linked.
       Gell-Man calls the idea 'rubbish.' He now says his allusion to Buddhism
       (another interest) was just 'a joke that some people took seriously.'"

A joke taken tooo seriously, he says.


>Sheldon L. Glashow, gia'o su+  dda.i-ho.c Harvard dda~ ddu+o+.c gia?i
>Nobel ve^` Va^.t-ly' , dda~ vie^'t nhu+ sau:  "Nuclear physics, like 
>atomic physics before it, was once a 'fundamental new theory concerning the 
>structure of matter'.


As an aside, it's Glashow ("Higgins Professor of Physics and Mellon Professor
of the Sciences at Harvard, and a Nobel laureate") who, at the end of a NOVA
show ("What Einstein Never Knew"), playfully drew up a parallel between the
result of an experiment known as "missing energy" at CERN, the European lab
for particle physics, and the Zen koan "what's the sound of one hand clapping?"


>CTN


So, to sum it up: Since these are only parallels, they should not be expected
to be perfect. And though all these parallels are interesting to note, perhaps
they should not be taken tooo seriously.

Vietanh Nguyen


Notes:
------
[1] John Archibald Wheeler, A Journey into Gravity and Spacetime, p. 36.

[2] It's often heard that, in Buddhism, the Noble Eightfold Way is the path
    leading to the ending of desire consisting in:

       Right outlook : the understanding of the Four Noble Truths.
       Right purpose : to reach salvation.
       Right speech  : not to lie and not to slander.
       Right behavior: not to kill, not to steal, not to be unchaste,
                       not to drink intoxicants.
       Right self-discipline: to practice the monastic life.
       Right effort  : to exercise will power.
       Right self-knowledge: constantly to examine one's behavior and
                       learn to correct it.
       Right self-transcendence: to meditate on the ultimate truths.

    Perhaps a devout Buddhist among us could help explain to me what "not to
    slander" (Right speech) really means - does it include "not to spread
    biased and unchecked info to defame other religions"? Or perhaps, it's
    just a matter of (lengthy) interpretation? Thanks for your help.

[3] A Profile of Murray Gell-Mann, Sci Am, March 1992, pp. 30-31.

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