[Buddha-l] Re: Views of Information & Knowledge

[Barnaby Thieme]

Howdy Bernie

>>I'm not saying that Nagarjuna was performing particle physics, but the
>>similarities here are rather obvious.
>
>Only if you do violence to the two theories.

It's hard for me to see how trying to understand the larger implications of 
a scientific theory constitutes "doing violence" to the theory, particularly 
if the interpretation you're working with is driven by data and not 
vice-versa. That is precisely why I am interested in the Copenhagen 
Interpretation - because it is an interpretation.

The fact that the professional physicists that you know and work with 
restrict their thinking about these issues to the parameters circumscribed 
by their discipline does not mean that the implications of their findings do 
not have larger relevance to what we know of the world. You are free to lack 
interest in a conversation pertaining to the broader implications of both 
science and Buddhist philosophy, but you are wrong to insist that such a 
conversation should not occur.

As I argued before with Erik, discourse is not so context-dependent that we 
are unable to draw implications concerning our world from specialized 
discourse. If it were so, it is hard for me to see what the larger point is 
of looking at this material, unless one is purely interested in developing 
technology, say. Then there are persons like myself, who are interested in 
understanding their world.

There is a strong contingent within science that is interested in 
understanding what these theories mean in a larger context, as I am - 
persons like the aforementioned Bohr and Heisenberg. Both thought and wrote 
quite a bit about these matters. You can dismiss me, but you will be 
harder-pressed to dismiss them, if you take your own credentials seriously.

Barnaby