Re: The interconnectedness of all things; Buddhists and the modern Chaos theory Posted by Erik@CoreWave on June 06, 1998 at 22:16:07:
In Reply to: Re: The interconnectedness of all things; Buddhists and the modern Chaos theory posted by Margot on June 05, 1998 at 07:03:42:
I must agree that Buddhist religion's and mathematics' emphasis on interconnnectedness, or quantum physics in particular, are perhaps merely two different languages saying the same thing.
Fritjof Capra wrote a very insightful book I believe in the 1976 on this very subject. Even though the book does show its age, and it has its critics among hardcore mathematicians, it was the first to bring to a mass audience this revolutionary idea.
There is one thing I'd like to add to the discussion, and that is in regard to the butterfly's flapping "causing" a tornado hundreds of miles away. Another aspect of modern physics as well as Buddhist philosophy is the the blurring of time and thus causality. In physics it's called the "observer effect."
As I understand it, when one attempts to measure the mass of a subatomic particle, other measurements will vary as opposed to when one is measuring say the particle's speed. In other words, the observer can actully alter the "reality" of the particle.
An easier parallel for me comes from Native American philosophy and practice, although it is quite similar to Buddhist philosophy in this regard. Native Americans did "rain dances" and ceremonies "raising the sun." Upon closer study of the thinking of the people participating in these acts, we see that their belief was not so much that they were "causing" the rain or the sunrise, but participating in the event. Their rituals were causing the event as much as the event was causing the rituals.
As the Game II facilitator, I'd like to thank you all for a very interesting subject. I will be working on including in the Inner Game.