Some 544 scientists have signed a petition asking for the presentation (by Dalai Lama) to be cancelled. They claim, "It will highlight a subject with largely unsubstantiated claims and comprise scientific rigour and objectivity". The neuroscientists have also got some supporters they say that his research is incomplete. I heard one of them saying, "true science is about making no presumptions about the unknown. But it is not a science until the known is unknown. And what the Dalai Lama plans to present is still unknown".
Science, spirituality, known, unknown, neuroscience, metaphysics…
All right.
Let's start from the very basics. What is science? I am not going to define science (for some reasons) but every body will agree with me on one thing that science is all about proofs. If a proposal can be proved it becomes law of science. The neuroscientists claim that Dalai Lama is still to provide some incontrovertible and independently ratified proof to be eligible to make the presentation. Now here is one important question which all of us tend to skip. What are the criteria to define a proof? Normally when we say, "this thing exists" we mean that either we can hear it, smell it, see it, touch it or taste it".
If you see carefully you realize that our knowledge is limited to these five senses. If something exists which is above or below these senses then it is not there for us. It is not necessary for that thing to exist but we don't have any proof to prove that something (like that) doesn't exist. See, if we can't realize the existence of something it has to be at very-very micro level. Thing is that we only start looking at something when it starts making impact on our lives or showing it's presence. Our human culture is 5000 years old and an average human life is of less than 100 years. Fact is that we don't have enough time to wait. We did wait for some microorganisms to turn our milk to curd, or to cause some diseases before making a microscope. The problem that we are not having enough Newtons and Einsteins is that our thrust for knowledge is not as pure as their. They wanted to know something for one and only one cause that is, "pure knowledge". Getting a prize, making a presentation, doing a research for name, fame and money was not all that they were for. Like today's scientists they were not scientists. They never used to think like "what I am going to get if I research on this", "will it be good for the science if we do some thinking on this topic".
There is no doubt that Dalai Lama is a religious person and not a scientist and for scientists religion is not a science. But for those who believe "religion is the most tried and tested science to explore the available human resources". If it is not true then tell me why every culture that ever existed on this planet had at least one religion. Thing is that spirituality (which is the laboratory of a religion) and science are not mutually exclusive things. And if the neuroscientists have their target as the service of human society and not of their own then they must include spirituality to science. So that they can make science more useful. And for the shake of pure knowledge Dalai Lama must be allowed to make the presentation.
Ankit Kumar