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

[Erik Hoogcarspel]

Op 03-11-12 00:24, Richard Hayes schreef:
> On Nov 2, 2012, at 12:53 PM, "Erik Hoogcarspel" <jehms at xs4all.nl> wrote:
>
>> I'm afraid this is not a matter of taste, but of bad philosophy.
> As you know, Erik, bad philosophy is the only kind I know how to do, and I just barely know how to do that.
>
>> In the sixties Fritjof Capra and Gary Snyder made a lot of bucks with their fairy tales, just because so many people do not know what science is.
>>
>> I'm not aware of these fellows' work. I thought Snyder was a beat poet. I rather like his poetry, but I'm unfamiliar with anything he did that could be described as scientism.
>>
>>
I mixed up Snyder with Zukav as Franz has already made clear, perhaps I 
had to many Wuli masters in my head. I don't want to accuse anyone 
personally of being a bad philosopher, certainly not you, Richard, but 
I'm pretty sure that scientism is a myth.
I'm surprised that Dan, who claims to have some expertise in the field 
of phenomenology, still has these old New Age thoughts about science and 
spirituality (whatever that may be). 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. 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.
The Mind and Life circle is a group of friends who still have the same 
New Age thoughts as Dan, but no clue what philosophy is about. They 
still think that Descartes introduced dualism in a happy world being the 
culprit who in 1650 spoiled life for all of us and that the Dalai Lama 
has to rescue us. The Dalai Lama on the other hand thinks that if you 
learn Tibetan monks quantum physics they will understand what's going on 
in the world.
Everyone is entitled to his or her dreams, but I find reality much more 
interesting.

Erik