Natural Science and Philosophy: In Search of a World View - Mind & Life Institute

Dialogue 6|Session 9

Overview

Piet Hut uses photographs and computer simulations of colliding galaxies to explain how gravity shapes galaxies and clusters, how galactic collisions can produce new stars, and how scientific models combine precise mathematics with approximate assumptions. The Dalai Lama connects the eventual dissolution of stars, planets, and galaxies with Buddhist teachings on impermanence, suggesting that this cosmic perspective could help people question the value of political, ideological, and religious conflict. The discussion then broadens into how science develops by revising its own foundations, moving from classical determinism toward relativity and quantum mechanics, and replacing fixed objects with relational processes and changing phenomena. Hut argues that science has traditionally filtered out subjective qualities such as color, beauty, meaning, and direct experience, but may gradually develop a more inclusive approach that brings objectivity and subjectivity together. This possibility is compared with Madhyamaka philosophy, which allows valid knowledge while recognizing that appearances are conditioned, relational, and lacking fixed, independent existence.

Dialogue 6
10 sessions
October 31, 1997
Dharamsala, India
ML6-day5-06311997-Hut_Presentation |docx|
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Speakers

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Arthur Zajonc, PhD, was professor of physics at Amherst College from 1978 to 2012, when he became President of the Mind & Life Institute. His research has included studies in electron-atom physics, parity violation in atoms, quantum optics, the experimental foundations of quantum physics, and the relationship between science, the humanities and the contemplative traditions. He has also written extensively on Goethe’s science work. He is author of the book: Catching the Light, co-author of The Quantum Challenge, and co-editor of Goethe’s Way of Science. In 1997, he served as scientific coordinator for the Mind and Life dialogue published as The New Physics and Cosmology: Dialogues with the Dalai Lama. He organized the 2002 dialogue with the Dalai Lama, “The Nature of Matter, the Nature of Life,” and acted as moderator at MIT for the “Investigating the Mind” Mind and Life dialogue in 2003, the proceedings of which were published under the title The Dalai Lama at MIT. While directing the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, Arthur fostered the use of contemplative practice in college and university classrooms, and he continues to speak around the world on the importance of contemplative pedagogy. Out of this work and his long-standing meditative practice, Zajonc has most recently authored Meditation as Contemplative Inquiry: When Knowing Becomes Love. He has also been General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in America, a co-founder of the Kira Institute, president of the Lindisfarne Association, and a senior program director at the Fetzer Institute.

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Tenzin Gyatso, the14th Dalai Lama, is the leader of Tibetan Buddhism and a spiritual leader revered worldwide. He was born on July 6, 1935, in a small village called Taktser in northeastern Tibet. Born to a peasant family, he was recognized at the age of two, in accordance with Tibetan tradition, as the reincarnation of his predecessor, the 13th Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lamas are manifestations of the Buddha of Compassion, who choose to reincarnate for the purpose of serving human beings. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1989, he is universally respected as a spokesman for the compassionate and peaceful resolution of human conflict. He has traveled extensively, speaking on subjects including universal responsibility, love, compassion and kindness. Less well known is his intense personal interest in the sciences; he has said that if he were not a monk, he would have liked to be an engineer. As a youth in Lhasa it was he who was called on to fix broken machinery in the Potala Palace, be it a clock or a car. He has a vigorous interest in learning the newest developments in science, and brings to bear both a voice for the humanistic implications of the findings, and a high degree of intuitive methodological sophistication.

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