The Buddhist Blog: Where Science and Buddhism Meet.

Monday, June 08, 2009

Where Science and Buddhism Meet.

Where Science and Buddhism Meet from Gerald Penilla on Vimeo.

~Peace to all beings~

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3 comments:

Spiv said...: I'm afraid this is, to be blunt, utter nonsense. It's a total and complete misunderstanding of quantum physics rattled on in the vaguest of ways and laid over Buddhism in the vaguest of ways.

An apple is not a wave through the whole universe in quantum physics. It is an object made of particles we do not fully understand, which can be expressed partially in wave form for the area it occupies.

Likewise saying a wave is a "non solid" is like saying a melody is the worst picket fence I've ever installed. It's metaphor at best, and "colorless green ideas sleep furiously" at worst.

Quantum uncertainty is not about human conciousness. It's about the interaction of a measuring device. It means you can know one property, but finding it will effect your result on another property.

Additionally particle wave duality is speaking directly of light. Not apples. There are wave properties that can be implied of apples, but generally people have this terrible version that every high school text book seems to rattle off (which makes no sense at all, and I cannot understand why it's still taught).

Emptiness of atoms: Atoms are not all pushing against you to make something feel solid. Check out how geckos climb things. It's very fascinating, and relies on atomic attraction. The "illusion of solidity" can more be likened to throwing a baseball at an airplane propeller. Chances are, it won't pass through, regardless of the fact that the propeller only occupies 1/50th of the space at any given time.

And of course, I knew quantum entanglement would pop into this. It always does. It's one of those things that sounds so wild that it has to show up in every "woo" based thing ever. It always leads to the same assertion: Her hair is brown, mine is blonde, they both start with a B. We're meant to be together.

The Plank quote is also one of those ridiculous things drug up by creationists everywhere trying to push "intelligent design." Despite having heard this quote a few dozen times, I've never seen it actually referenced, nor can anyone seem to point me to its source. It would be very unlike Plank to automatically attribute any phenomenon to some magical intelligence out there somewhere.

Double slit experiment deals with light. Again, to say they were shooting particles through the double slit is putting the horse before the carriage. We are talking about the particle like nature of light, but not shooting baseballs or grapes or sand through. You pass these things through a double slit experiment and you get purely particle results. If you use something as a medium for waves to act through, such as water, you can get purely wave results. When you use light, you can achieve both results depending on how you set up the experiment. particles above a plank mass do not clearly exhibit wave like properties.

The idea that the line between science and religion has somehow blurred rather than sharpened is delusional. It's become harsh and brutal since it has become more passable to place religious believes under the microscope. This is especially obvious in christianity, but none are immune to it.

What science and Buddhism have in common, and this is very important and very powerful, is the ability to adapt as the information improves.

This is, however, no different than saying the bible knew the earth was spherical and calculated Pi (as apposed to it actually saying it's a circle, like a plate, and Pi is 3).; 5:20 PM
Pat Perry said...: There's a pretty neat conference coming up that deals some of this stuff, I think. It might be of interest to you. There's a story about it at the Shamb Sun's news thing.
http://www.shambhalasun.com/news/?p=2505; 1:49 PM
Term said...: Agree with the above comment ..!

Term papers within deadlines.; 1:37 AM

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