Nagarjuna & Quantum Physics
Posted: Sun Dec 05, 2021 8:56 am
While listening to the Debate "Has Science Killed Philosophy"
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=34063
Rovelli mentioned Nagarjuna [Buddhist Philosopher 150-250 CE] theories could explain the fundamentals Quantum Mechanics effectively.
Here is the full extract from his book: Helgoland : Making Sense Of The Quantum Revolution
Carlo Rovelli, translated by Erica Segre and Simon Carnell.
.............."Quote"
In my own attempts to make sense of quanta for myself, I have wandered among the texts of philosophers in search of a conceptual basis with which to understand the strange picture of the world provided by this incredible theory.
In doing so, I have found many fine suggestions and acute criticisms, but nothing wholly convincing.
Until one day I came across a work that left me amazed.
I will end this chapter, which does not have any conclusions, with a light account of this encounter.
I did not come across it by chance.
When speaking about quanta and their relational nature, I had frequently met people who asked: Have you read Nāgārjuna?
When I’d heard my umpteenth “Have you read Nāgārjuna?” I decided to go ahead and read it.
Though not widely known in the West, the work in question is hardly an obscure or minor one: it is one of the most important texts of Buddhist philosophy, so it was only due to my personal ignorance of Asian thought (not so uncharacteristic in the West) that I was unaware of it.
Its title is one of those never-ending Sanskrit words—Mūlamadhyamakakārikā—translated in numerous ways, including The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way.
I read it in a translation with commentary by an American analytic philosopher.
It has made a profound impression upon me.118
Nāgārjuna lived in the second century CE. There have been countless commentaries on his text, which has been overlaid with interpretations and exegesis. The interest of such ancient texts lies partly in the stratification of readings that gives them to us enriched by levels of meaning. What really interests us about ancient texts is not what the author initially intended to say: it is how the work can speak to us now, and what it can suggest today.
The central thesis of Nāgārjuna’s book is simply that
there is nothing that exists in itself independently from something else.
The resonance with quantum mechanics is immediate.
Obviously, Nāgārjuna knew nothing, and could not have imagined anything, about quanta—that is not the point.
The point is that philosophers offer original ways of rethinking the world, and we can employ them if they turn out to be useful.
The perspective offered by Nāgārjuna may perhaps make it a little easier to think about the quantum world.
If nothing exists in itself, everything exists only through dependence on something else, in relation to something else.
The technical term used by Nāgārjuna to describe the absence of independent existence is “emptiness” (śūnyatā): things are “empty” in the sense of having no autonomous existence.
They exist thanks to, as a function of, with respect to, in the perspective of, something else.
If I look at a cloudy sky—to take a simplistic example—I can see a castle and a dragon.
Do a castle and a dragon really exist up there in the sky?
Obviously not: the dragon and the castle emerge from the encounter between the shape of the clouds and the sensations and thoughts in my head; in themselves, they are empty entities, they do not exist.
So far, so easy.
But Nāgārjuna also suggests that the clouds, the sky, sensations, thoughts and my own head are equally things that arise from the encounter with other things: they are empty entities.
And myself, looking at a star, do I exist? No, not even I. So who is observing the star?
No one, says Nāgārjuna. To see a star is a component of that set of interactions that I conventionally call my “self.” “What articulates language does not exist. The circle of thoughts does not exist.”119
There is no ultimate or mysterious essence to understand—that is the true essence of our being.
“I” is nothing other than the vast and interconnected set of phenomena that constitute it, each one dependent on something else.
Centuries of Western speculation on the subject, and on the nature of consciousness, vanish like morning mist.
Like much philosophy and much science, Nāgārjuna distinguishes between two levels: conventional, apparent reality with its illusory and perspectival aspects, and ultimate reality. But in this case the distinction takes us in an unexpected direction:
the ultimate reality, the essence, is absence, is vacuity. It does not exist.
If every metaphysics seeks a primary substance, an essence on which everything may depend, the point of departure from which everything follows, Nāgārjuna suggests that the ultimate substance, the point of departure . . . does not exist.
There are timid intuitions in a similar direction in Western philosophy.
But Nāgārjuna’s perspective is radical.
Conventional, everyday existence is not negated; on the contrary, it is taken into account in all of its complexity, with its levels and facets.
It can be studied, explored, analyzed, reduced to more elementary terms.
But there is no sense, Nāgārjuna argues, in looking for an ultimate substratum.
The difference from contemporary structural realism, for instance, seems clear: I can imagine Nāgārjuna adding a short chapter to a contemporary edition of his book entitled “All Structures are Empty.” They exist only when you are thinking about organizing something else.
In his terms: “They are neither precedent to objects; nor not precedent to objects; neither are they both things; nor, ultimately, neither one nor the other thing.”*
The illusoriness of the world, its samsāra, is a general theme of Buddhism; to recognize this is to reach nirvāna, liberation and beatitude.
For Nāgārjuna, samsāra and nirvāna are the same thing: both empty of their own existence.Nonexistent.
So is emptiness the only reality?
Is this, after all, the ultimate reality?
No, writes Nāgārjuna, in the most vertiginous chapter of his book: every perspective exists only in interdependence with something else, there is never an ultimate reality—and this is the case for his own perspective as well.
Even emptiness is devoid of essence: it is conventional.
No metaphysics survives.
Emptiness is empty.
............ "unquote".
continue next post..
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=34063
Rovelli mentioned Nagarjuna [Buddhist Philosopher 150-250 CE] theories could explain the fundamentals Quantum Mechanics effectively.
Here is the full extract from his book: Helgoland : Making Sense Of The Quantum Revolution
Carlo Rovelli, translated by Erica Segre and Simon Carnell.
.............."Quote"
In my own attempts to make sense of quanta for myself, I have wandered among the texts of philosophers in search of a conceptual basis with which to understand the strange picture of the world provided by this incredible theory.
In doing so, I have found many fine suggestions and acute criticisms, but nothing wholly convincing.
Until one day I came across a work that left me amazed.
I will end this chapter, which does not have any conclusions, with a light account of this encounter.
I did not come across it by chance.
When speaking about quanta and their relational nature, I had frequently met people who asked: Have you read Nāgārjuna?
When I’d heard my umpteenth “Have you read Nāgārjuna?” I decided to go ahead and read it.
Though not widely known in the West, the work in question is hardly an obscure or minor one: it is one of the most important texts of Buddhist philosophy, so it was only due to my personal ignorance of Asian thought (not so uncharacteristic in the West) that I was unaware of it.
Its title is one of those never-ending Sanskrit words—Mūlamadhyamakakārikā—translated in numerous ways, including The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way.
I read it in a translation with commentary by an American analytic philosopher.
It has made a profound impression upon me.118
Nāgārjuna lived in the second century CE. There have been countless commentaries on his text, which has been overlaid with interpretations and exegesis. The interest of such ancient texts lies partly in the stratification of readings that gives them to us enriched by levels of meaning. What really interests us about ancient texts is not what the author initially intended to say: it is how the work can speak to us now, and what it can suggest today.
The central thesis of Nāgārjuna’s book is simply that
there is nothing that exists in itself independently from something else.
The resonance with quantum mechanics is immediate.
Obviously, Nāgārjuna knew nothing, and could not have imagined anything, about quanta—that is not the point.
The point is that philosophers offer original ways of rethinking the world, and we can employ them if they turn out to be useful.
The perspective offered by Nāgārjuna may perhaps make it a little easier to think about the quantum world.
If nothing exists in itself, everything exists only through dependence on something else, in relation to something else.
The technical term used by Nāgārjuna to describe the absence of independent existence is “emptiness” (śūnyatā): things are “empty” in the sense of having no autonomous existence.
They exist thanks to, as a function of, with respect to, in the perspective of, something else.
If I look at a cloudy sky—to take a simplistic example—I can see a castle and a dragon.
Do a castle and a dragon really exist up there in the sky?
Obviously not: the dragon and the castle emerge from the encounter between the shape of the clouds and the sensations and thoughts in my head; in themselves, they are empty entities, they do not exist.
So far, so easy.
But Nāgārjuna also suggests that the clouds, the sky, sensations, thoughts and my own head are equally things that arise from the encounter with other things: they are empty entities.
And myself, looking at a star, do I exist? No, not even I. So who is observing the star?
No one, says Nāgārjuna. To see a star is a component of that set of interactions that I conventionally call my “self.” “What articulates language does not exist. The circle of thoughts does not exist.”119
There is no ultimate or mysterious essence to understand—that is the true essence of our being.
“I” is nothing other than the vast and interconnected set of phenomena that constitute it, each one dependent on something else.
Centuries of Western speculation on the subject, and on the nature of consciousness, vanish like morning mist.
Like much philosophy and much science, Nāgārjuna distinguishes between two levels: conventional, apparent reality with its illusory and perspectival aspects, and ultimate reality. But in this case the distinction takes us in an unexpected direction:
the ultimate reality, the essence, is absence, is vacuity. It does not exist.
If every metaphysics seeks a primary substance, an essence on which everything may depend, the point of departure from which everything follows, Nāgārjuna suggests that the ultimate substance, the point of departure . . . does not exist.
There are timid intuitions in a similar direction in Western philosophy.
But Nāgārjuna’s perspective is radical.
Conventional, everyday existence is not negated; on the contrary, it is taken into account in all of its complexity, with its levels and facets.
It can be studied, explored, analyzed, reduced to more elementary terms.
But there is no sense, Nāgārjuna argues, in looking for an ultimate substratum.
The difference from contemporary structural realism, for instance, seems clear: I can imagine Nāgārjuna adding a short chapter to a contemporary edition of his book entitled “All Structures are Empty.” They exist only when you are thinking about organizing something else.
In his terms: “They are neither precedent to objects; nor not precedent to objects; neither are they both things; nor, ultimately, neither one nor the other thing.”*
The illusoriness of the world, its samsāra, is a general theme of Buddhism; to recognize this is to reach nirvāna, liberation and beatitude.
For Nāgārjuna, samsāra and nirvāna are the same thing: both empty of their own existence.Nonexistent.
So is emptiness the only reality?
Is this, after all, the ultimate reality?
No, writes Nāgārjuna, in the most vertiginous chapter of his book: every perspective exists only in interdependence with something else, there is never an ultimate reality—and this is the case for his own perspective as well.
Even emptiness is devoid of essence: it is conventional.
No metaphysics survives.
Emptiness is empty.
............ "unquote".
continue next post..