This fascinating dialogue reveals how the ancient philosophical ideas of Buddhism can be joined harmoniously with the revelations of the most cutting-edge science of today, the science of quantum physics, and how together they can offer powerful answers to the most beguiling questions about life.
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This fascinating dialogue reveals how the ancient philosophical ideas of Buddhism can be joined harmoniously with the revelations of the most cutting-edge science of today, the science of quantum physics, and how together they can offer powerful answers to the most beguiling questions about life.
Read Less
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The nature of the relationship, and the compatibility, between the scientific and the religious outlook continues to fascinate scientists, religious people, and philosophers. Most of the many books on this subject deal with religion in general terms or concentrate on Western theistic religions (primarily Christianity and Judaism.)
"The Quantum and the Lotus" is a fascinating discussion of Buddhism and science told through articulate and intelligent exchanges between Matthieu Ricard and Trihn Xuan Thuan. Ricard earned a PhD in chemistry in France before leaving a promising career to become a Tibetan Buddhist monk. Thuan is a Vietnamese who became enamored of science at an early age and is a world-renowned astrophysicist and writer.
The most important sections of this book are the introduction, which sets the problem, and the conclusion. Science does not satisfy the spiritual needs of man -- his need to end suffering, understand himself, and the nature of his world -- to find meaning. How is it possible to find religious meaning in a world where science seems to be the only source of knowledge?
In his introduction, Ricard argues that science and Buddhism approach reality in different ways. He finds Buddhism non-dogmatic, willing to accept scientific findings and based on an introspection into the human condition with Buddha as a guide. Thuan agrees that human beings need spirituality as well as science.
There are fifteen chapters discussing with impressing erudition specific scientific issues and how Buddhists might view them. We get discussions of the "big bang" theory of quantum mechanics, the nature of time, computers and thought, and the nature of consciousness, among other topics. For a book cast in the form of a discussion, the references are copious.
There is a great deal of discussion of Buddhism's focus on indeterminacy and change and its relation to science. Also, Ricard focuses of the deep and difficult Buddhist teaching of dependent arising. He tries to argue that this teaching shows the untenability of scientific (or metaphysical) realism -- the view that science describes an independently existing reality.
Ricard also takes issue with theism and here he gets something of a disagreement from Thuan who believes in a Spinozistic concept of God (which needs explaining) and is something of a scientific realist.
There is a wonderful summation by Thusn: "Made of stardust, we share the same cosmic history as the lions on the savannas and the lavenders in the fields. We are all connected through time and space, and thus interdependent.(page 280)
Some of this book is highly technical and Ricard, is spite of himself is over dogmatic in places. This is still a wonderful book. It teaches a "secular spirituality" in the words of Ricard and may be read with benefit by those with no particular commitment to Buddhism.
