Buddhist roots and contemporary science

The meaning of ku, which is a part of the Buddhist concept of Three Truths (Ke, Ku and Chu)

Ke/temporary existence- Can be thought of as life's manifestations and earthly phenomena.

Ku is that which can not be perceived with the senses but exists as pure potential. Non substantiality. Ku is used to describe the state we are in after we die. "Ku is entirely different from non-existence. It is the potential-void combining the three views of existence: Ketai, Kutai and Chutai."

Chu/The Middle Way The way which both transcends and unites dualities such as life and death.The realization of the unchanging essence of the universe. This concept is so difficult to grasp, it has been explained by saying what it is not; in the Eightfold Negations: 'neither birth nor death, neither cessation nor permanence, neither identity nor difference, neither coming nor going.'

Ideas (ku) become realized as tangible changes or actions (ke). The nature (ku) of these actions will be influenced by Chu. Chu is the permeating life force of the universe; it may be compared to our essence, which in turn is shaped by our dominant life state.

The concepept of ku, has been translated as latency, non-substantiality, emptiness and void. The first articulations of this idea comes from Nagarjuna. He believed that the state of "neither existence nor nonexistence" described in this concept expressed the true nature of all things. The paradoxical nature of this idea, however, makes it somewhat foreign to Western dualist logic. Ku, however, is down-to-earth, and in fact consistent with the findings of contemporary science.

Modern physics, in attempting to discover the essence of matter, has arrived at a description of the world that is very close to that of Nagarjuna. What scientists have discovered is that there is no actual, easily identifiable "thing" at the basis of matter. Subatomic particles, the building blocks of the physical world that we inhabit, appear to oscillate between states of being and nonbeing. Instead of a fixed "thing" in a particular place, we find only shifting waves of probability. At this level, the world is actually a highly fluid and unpredictable place, essentially without substance. It is this non-substantial nature of reality that the concept of ku describes.

Comments about Art and Science

We are not humans having a spiritual experience,
we are spirits having a human experience.
Pierre Chardin

Science

1. Ignorance is bliss.
   
2. Knowledge, "...can't get no satisfaction!"

1. About the tea party...Quantum physics teaches us that there's no good reason, or law, that stops the pouring tea from going up. And the broken egg can mend itself. Yeah, right.

1. Define everything that a human being is in truth (not honesty) and all the other answers are verifiable through standard theorem, test and prove procedures.
2. Until one understands the totality of "human" then no explanation to the question is possible because all of the components of the equation are not included.

1. I can't see the forest because I am a tree. So when I fell, I fell in backwards. Heaven is within. Only Time will tell if I made a sound when I landed. Assume I did. I made a big bang, and a choir of angels roared in my behalf.

Science and Art

1. I believe poetry is a more accurate description of the world than science because time is not linear. Science is based on linear causality across time, prose like this is linear. Time is not linear and poetry is how language escapes linearity.

1. Numbers are a means to an end, art is an end in itself, it is meaning.

1. i know...
2. but it's not enough, i know
3. i love...and it's not little, you know
4. 
   
5. i'm standing on a dot
6. but i can see
7. infinity
8. and
9. beyond
   

1. I believe art is also crucial for the well being of the brain. We have evolved over time from periods of intense physical activity, where the body was exercised continuously just to find and capture food, to leading sedentary lives. Thus,the effect of no exercise on the body can be clearly seen. As the body gets less exercise, the brain takes a more prominent role, 'thinking' instead of physically 'doing'.
2. Art can occupy the brain when it needs its own exercise, when it isn't taking care of the physical aspects of the body's operation.
3. Art is an outlet for the mind, as physical exertion is an outlet for pent up aggression.

Art

1. I think that art might replace the playing activity kids do everyday and grown ups stop doing, Art has pretty similar characteristics to playing, it is exploratory, it is fun, it involves discovering, it involves learning and creating, and so on.

1. ...beauty isn't strictly located in the brain..." well, the brain isn't strictly beautiful, either.

1. There is no doubt that perception allows people to connect, and that I believe is our true nature.
2. We are all connected in a sense yet granted the gift of our unique perceptions.

1. Have you considered that the universe itself might be sentient and that the laws of physics are merely universal thought patterns? In this view, would reality be changeable or plastic as defined by universal thought?

Artists


Val, Walking man, Uncle Tree, Scribulus, Squires, Stu, Human Being, Rick

Art and science

In the early 1920s, Niels Bohr was struggling to reimagine the structure of matter. Previous generations of physicists had thought the inner space of an atom looked like a miniature solar system with the atomic nucleus as the sun and the whirring electrons as planets in orbit. This was the classical model.

But Bohr had spent time analyzing the radiation emitted by electrons, and he realized that science needed a new metaphor. The behavior of electrons seemed to defy every conventional explanation. As Bohr said, “When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry.” Ordinary words couldn’t capture the data.

The view of science as the sole mediator of everything depends upon one unstated assumption: While art cycles with the fashions, scientific knowledge is a linear ascent. The history of science is supposed to obey a simple equation: Time plus data equals understanding. One day, we believe, science will solve everything.

But the trajectory of science has proven to be a little more complicated. The more we know about reality—about its quantum mechanics and neural origins—the more palpable its paradoxes become. As Vladimir Nabokov, the novelist and lepidopterist, once put it, “The greater one’s science, the deeper the sense of mystery.”

The fundamental point is that modern science has made little progress toward any unified understanding of everything. Our unknowns have not dramatically receded. In many instances, the opposite has happened, so that our most fundamental sciences are bracketed by utter mystery. It’s not that we don’t have all the answers. It’s that we don’t even know the question.

How can the sciences overcome their present limitation? Science needs the arts for that. We need to find a place for the artist within the experimental process, to rediscover what Bohr observed when he looked at those cubist paintings. The current constraints of science make it clear that the breach between our two cultures is not merely an academic problem. It is a practical problem, and it holds back science’s theories. we need to bridge our cultural divide. By heeding the wisdom of the arts, science can gain the kinds of new insights and perspectives that are the seeds of scientific progress

Evolution of modern science

In recent times, and especially over the past quarter century:the following trends emerged:
1. Scientific integrity has become a live issue in public culture.
2. Academia and industry as scientific work environments have converged in all sorts of ways.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, doing science was typically more of an avocation than a job. In the 17th century, the great chemist R. Boyle not only financed his science out of his own pockets but also shared a common view that doing science as a "trade" was demeaning. Anyone who accepted money to pursue knowledge would compromise their integrity. Newton, as professor of mathematics at Cambridge, was not paid to do physical or mathematical research but to teach. The 19th century's most famous scientist, Charles Darwin, was never paid to do science. Einstein's three great papers of 1905 were not part of his job specifications. True, over the course of history,
many scientific researchers were in academic employment, but with few exceptions, before the 20th century, the job of a science professor was not to produce new knowledge but to transmit and safeguard the existing one.

The transformation of science from a calling to a job happened during the course of the past century. Indeed, science is arguably the world's youngest profession: The routinization of the paid role is less than a hundred years old; the word "scientist," coined in 1840, was not in standard usage until the early 20th century. Actually almost no one agrees with boyle in that "taking
money to do science will compromise it's integrity"..

The "engineers" and the enterprising scientists whose discoveries can be turned to cures,
power, and, of course, profit are become the most prestigious sort of practitioner, the contemporary culture heroes.

The dissolution of boundaries between academia and industry has given enormous strength to modern science: resources to do what scientists want to do, time to do it, and the reputation that comes from aligning science with the concrete goods — better communications, better health and more energy-efficient products. And if the scientists inhabiting such institutions can now make a good living that too augments the value that our sort of society grants to science.

As we enter the 21st century, new institutional configurations for doing science emerge, together with new scientific agendas and new conceptions of what it is to be a scientist. Some participants and observers of the scene celebrate these changes; others are seriously worried about them. We can be sure of only one thing: The identity of the modern scientist is, in every possible sense, a work in progres.