[Buddha-l] Article: The Death of the Scientific Buddha

[Richard Hayes]

On Nov 3, 2012, at 2:47 AM, "Erik Hoogcarspel" <jehms at xs4all.nl> wrote:

> Not only Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty have written convincingly about the differences between a scientific and a philosophical discourse, but also living philosophers as Bruno Latour and those of the new phenomenological movement make clear that causal explanations don't tell us anything about what it means to be human.

"What is it like to be human" is not a well-formulated scientific question. I'm not sure what kind of a question it is.

> This doesn't mean that scientific experiments on meditation are useless, just that you have to learn about meditation from an experienced meditator and that meditation cannot be developed into a new weapon against North Korea and the Taliban.

Scientific experiments on meditators are aimed at understanding neurophysiology better. No one claims such research is a substitute for working closely with an abusive authoritarian Zen master with a penchant for sexual predation.

Richard Hayes