Western Science, Buddhism and Chinthanaya

A good example is Einstein's theory of gravitation or the theory of general relativity that replaced Newton's theory of gravitation. The two theories are two different answers given to the question as to why "apples (coconuts) fall to the ground", and one cannot be considered as an improvement of the other. The theories or the answers have to be consistent with the "observations" to some degree though it is not the main criterion used in deciding between two competing theories.
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by Prof. Nalin de Silva.

(February 10, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) What is known as science is a corpus of knowledge that has been created mainly in the west since about the sixteenth century. This body of knowledge, though presented very often as an objective knowledge of an objective reality, is not independent of culture and is created within the western Christian cultures. The few non westerners who have contributed to "science" also have the same cultural basis at least in their respective professions and as such the corpus of knowledge that is identified as science should be categorised as western science to distinguish it from the other sciences that have been created with respect to other cultures.

In this paper it is argued that any knowledge is a creation of the human mind and not knowledge of something that is over there independent of the "observers". There are no perceptions without conceptions and conceptions are nothing but creations of the mind due to "avidya". The "prthagjanas" having not attained "Nibbana" have no alternative but to create knowledge. However, this creation does not take place in a vacuum, and is based in a Chinthanaya. We identify Chinthanaya as that which binds different aspects of a culture such as language, arts and crafts, music, science etc., into a whole. Chinthanaya is the basis of a culture and activities of people sharing a common culture are associated with it.

As has been shown by Feyerabend and others there is no scientific method as such and the notion of a science that cognises the objective world is rejected. The concepts such as objective reality, objective world are themselves the creations of the human mind and theories of western science, as in other sciences, are only answers constructed to questions raised by individuals living in particular epochs of time. The answers are not unique and sometimes one answer succeeds an answer that had been thought to be well accepted by the "scientific community". A good example is Einstein's theory of gravitation or the theory of general relativity that replaced Newton's theory of gravitation. The two theories are two different answers given to the question as to why "apples (coconuts) fall to the ground", and one cannot be considered as an improvement of the other. The theories or the answers have to be consistent with the "observations" to some degree though it is not the main criterion used in deciding between two competing theories.

What distinguishes western science from the other sciences is not the so called scientific method but the nature of the theories or the answers. In western science the answers are abstract and general and we would use the term theory to describe these abstract and general answers. These abstract answers very often are not "felt" though the consequences of the theories could be observed. For example nobody could perceive the gravitational field in Newton's theory though some results derived from the theory could be observed. Buddhism, like any other religion, also answers certain questions raised by individuals but the answers are not abstract. The answers could be seen or felt by the human mind and are concrete, except in the "case" of Nibbana, "which" is not a creation. The other answers are creations of the mind as in the case of answers supplied by western science.

Western Science is based on what could be called the Greek Judaic Christian Chinthanaya. This Chinthanaya is different from the medieval Catholic Chinthanaya and one could say that the antagonism of the Catholic church to early western science was the result of the incompatibility of the aforementioned Chinthanayas. On the other hand Buddhism is based on the pre Vedic Chinthanaya that was found in Bharath before the Aryans (or the Vedics) arrived. The Vedic Chinthanaya is found to be more abstract than the pre Vedic Chinthanayas, though not as abstract as the Greek Judaic Christian Chinthanaya. The differences in systems of knowledge could in general be traced to the differences in Chinthanayas rather than to differences in so called methodologies.

(Professor Nalin de Silva is a Sri Lankan theoretical physicist, philosopher and a political analyst. He is a Professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka.)