Opinion: Whose Authority Will Be Advanced By Buddhist-Science Dialogues?

November 3, 2005

Source: Sightings

http://marty-center.uchicago.edu/sightings/archive_2005/1103.shtml

On November 3, 2005 Sightings ran an article by Dan Arnold, assistant professor of philosophy of religions at the University of Chicago Divinity School, on the recent discussions over the Dalai Lama addressing a group of Stanford neuroscientists. Arnold writes, "To regular readers of mainstream news weeklies like Time and Newsweek, stories on the latest interface between Buddhism and neuroscience are familiar... [so] some readers might have been taken aback by the note of controversy sounded in a recent New York Times piece on the subject (Benedict Carey, 'Scientists Bridle at Lecture Plan for Dalai Lama,' October 19)... But the controversy in question should take into account some of the contestation internal to the Buddhist side of the story: There is a history behind the peculiarly high-profile relations that various Buddhist traditions have to science... Buddhists like Anagarika Dharmapala (an emissary to the 1893 World Parliament of Religions) in this way advanced the idea that it is Buddhism (and not Christianity) that is most compatible with the deliverances of science... While certain trajectories of Buddhist thought might indeed be suggestively comparable with the philosophical projects of cognitive science, it is important to ask what is at stake (and for whom) when it is urged that Buddhism is uniquely compatible (if not coextensive) with science. In particular, we should ask which tradition's authority is meant to be advanced by such claims -- a question that becomes all the more complex when it is further asked why either of these traditions should be thought to benefit from the borrowed authority of the other."