[MD] spirituality

[MarshaV]

Novelty...   


T:
    "When I spoke of a playful, creative nature.  I was indeed implying the existence of an organizing principle, of the sort envisaged by Spinoza and Einstein.  That said, you mustn't think that quantum theory overemphasizes pure chance.  There's still a lingering determinism within the theory.  Individual quantum events can't be determined, but probabilities for sets of events can be accurately forecast using the laws of statistics.  For example, while we can't calculate an electron's precise trajectory, we can calculate the probability of its being at any given point.  It's this vestigial determinism that allows our computers and stereos to work.  If everything in their electrical circuits was random, then they wouldn't function.  As for chaotic phenomena in the solar system, we can't predict the motion of the planets for periods of over several tens of millions of years (i.e., less than 1 percent of the age of the universe).  All the same, they have quietly continued orbiting around the Sun for the last four and a half billion years because, although the probability that their orbits will become chaotic isn't zero, it is extremely low.  Does Buddhism agree with this notion of bounded unpredictability?  

M:
     "In Buddhism, neither pure chance nor necessity can be accepted; they are two extremes, and neither of them stands up to analysis.  No effect can be causeless.  On the contrary, there are so many causes that it's impossible to come up with a linear, deterministic analysis of causality.  Strict determinism holds only where there is a finite number of factors in the cause-and-effect relationship.  But, in the global system, there is an undetermined number of elements involved, including consciousness.  A system like that necessarily escapes absolute determinism and transcends the powers of discursive thought.  Novelty can thus emerge from synergy without having to be explained by a limited number of causes or pure chance, that is to say the absence of any cause."

'Mathieu Ricard & Trinh Xuan Thuan, 'The Quantum and the Lotus: A Journey to the Frontiers Where Science and Buddhism Meet',pp.153-154)


 
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