Beyond a Reductionist Science: Buddhism’s Potential Contribution to Scientific Inquiry (Lessons from Ecology and the Study of Life)

The compatibility between Buddhist teachings on the nature of phenomena and interpretations of the nature of reality derived from quantum mechanics are well known and have been thoroughly explored in this magazine.¹^,² However, perhaps the greatest implications of this compatibility may not be that the conclusions on the nature of reality of quantum theory and Buddhism are similar, but instead that the nature of scientific inquiry is not as independent or objective as once thought. One of the central Buddhist teachings is on the interdependent nature of phenomena—that there is no separation between the observer, the object of observation and the process of observing. In contrast, one of the central tenets of classical scientific inquiry is the assumption that empirical evidence must be gathered by an objective and independent observer to draw a conclusion on an unbiased hypothesis. This approach and assumption arose in the Western world from the works of Galileo, Newton, and Descartes during the Age of Enlightenment (1500-1700 CE) in Europe. It disrupted the dominant faith-based religious worldview in Europe at that time and became the foundation of secular inquiry and the so-called “scientific method.”

The premise of an independent, objective observer was a cornerstone of scientific inquiry until the seminal experiments of early quantum physicists in the 1920s forced scientists to revisit this idea. The apparent paradox of their empirical evidence required scientists to not just question the nature of reality but the nature of their scientific approach itself. In his classic account Physics and Philosophy, Werner Heisenberg wrote, “I remember discussions with Bohr which went through many hours till very late at night and ended almost in despair; and when at the end of the discussion I went alone for a walk in the neighboring park, I repeated to myself again and again the question: Can nature possibly be so absurd as it seemed to us in these atomic experiments?”³

Similarly, but less well known, small groups of researchers in biology and ecology during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries who were studying complex natural systems were also grappling with the limitations of the objective observer assumption and reductionism to understand the nature of living systems. Presently, there is a tension in many fields of scientific inquiry between scientists holding onto the assumptions of the objective observer and those fully embracing the existential paradox on the nature of scientific inquiry. The Buddhist understanding of the interdependent nature of phenomena may provide some resolution to this tension and (apparent) paradox. This article will explore how a Buddhist understanding of phenomena can contribute to the process of scientific inquiry using examples in the fields of biology and ecology.

The History of Objective Observer and Reductionism in the West

The scientific method is not the product of a single author or philosopher but instead was developed and rediscovered over the centuries, culminating in a discrete methodology during the Age of Enlightenment.

Arguably, one of the most dominant thinkers to shape the modern scientific approach in the West was René Descartes. It was Descartes who formulated our modern conceptions of observation, analysis and mathematical modeling. He saw the universe as a complicated but predictable machine that operated like a big clock. He argued that phenomena can be understood by reducing the system to its constituent parts or to a simpler set of variables, understanding the behavior of these parts and then extrapolating these results to predict the behavior of the whole system. At the time, the natural conclusion of Newton’s work on bodies in motion—such as apples falling from a tree or the movement of planets—demonstrated that they also followed similar and predictable laws.

Most importantly, Descartes’ writings argued that a separate, independent observer was central to this analytical approach to inquiry when he partitioned all phenomena into mind (the objective observer) and matter (the independent phenomenon being observed).⁴ The culmination of this world view is often referred to as a reductionist (reducing the number of variables), cartesian (after Descartes) or mechanistic (the assumption the universe works like a giant machine) worldview.

What is Life? The Limitations of Reductionism

This reductionist approach has been extremely successful in understanding the nature of physical laws and has led to unprecedented technological success in the last 300 years of human civilization. It remains the basis for advances in architecture, energy systems, transportation, computer systems and space exploration. However, the reductionist approach has been less successful in understanding complex biological systems, in particular for the problem of reaching consensus on the definition of life itself. The limitations of the reductionist approach can be illustrated through the following exercise, which is often given in Biology 101 classes. The exercise is simple: first, classify all of the items in Table 1 into two lists, living and non-living elements. Second, establish a set of criteria that successfully separates every item in both lists—the criteria have to be true for every item in all circumstances in the living list and not true for every item in every circumstance in the non-living list.

Table 1

A baby	A seed	A human woman after menopause
An apple	A radio	A pollen grain
A bacterium	A virus	A crystal
A rock	A tree	The earth
An elephant	An automobile	The moon

A typical set of criteria that are explored include metabolism, response to stimuli, growth, capable of reproduction, or development. One quickly realizes that it is easy to find exceptions to any one of the common criteria, and there is no single criteria that successfully separates life from non-life. For example, if one chooses capacity for reproduction as a criteria for living, then a woman after menopause would then be classified as non-living, which would violate most people’s common sense and ethical ideas. Or if one chooses growth, then a crystal, which most people classify as non-living, quickly violates this criteria. The conclusion is that when defining life, a reductionist approach is limited.

A revolutionary approach to the question of the definition of life was taken by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela in the 1970s. These two scientists from Santiago, Chili were the first to take a non-reductionist approach to the question of what is life. Rather than looking for a single or limited set of criteria to define life, they attempted to understand the whole living system as a total phenomenon. They chose a simple form of life, E. Coli bacteria, and mapped every metabolic, biochemical, and biophysical pathway in the cell. Maturana and Varela then examined the complex relationships among all of the pathways and they discovered something unexpected and remarkable. The complex set of pathways interact and regulate one another in a deeply interconnected, non-linear set of relationships. The culmination of all of these interactions allows the cell to self-repair and self-maintain the metabolic components needed to maintain its functions. They recognized that what separates living systems from non-living systems is this ability to self-regenerate. They coined the term autopoiesis from the Greek roots “auto,” meaning self, and “poiesis,” meaning making or poetry. From this discovery, Maturana and Varela offered the first definition of life that successfully satisfies the exercise from the Biology 101 class: life is an organized system capable of maintaining itself within a boundary of its own making.⁵ This theory is often described as the Santiago School. Using this non-reductionist approach, Maturana and Varela made some additional observations that have thought-provoking and inspiring connections to a Buddhist understanding of the interdependent nature of phenomena.

Non-Localization and Interdependence

Maturana and Varela next asked where the ability to self-maintain is located. They concluded that autopoiesis is not centrally located or centrally controlled by any part of the bacteria, such as the nucleus or brain, but is, in fact, dependent on all the interdependent relationships and changing metabolic pathways of the cell. This means that each part of the cell is not actually living per se, but that when all the conditions come together in an interdependent relationship, then the phenomenon of living emerges. This concept of an emergent property of a system that is not observable in any single part of the system is compatible with the Buddhist understanding that all relative phenomena are not fixed or real in some independent, objective sense but rather are composed of a series of interdependent conditions arising together. As Lama Ole Nydahl writes:

If, however, one accurately examines the outer as well as the inner world, nothing is solid. Everything vibrates, flows, and changes constantly—be it worlds, atoms, thoughts, or feelings. What is experienced as being real is actually a permanent stream of changes.⁶

*Chakrasamvara Mandala, Nepal ca. 1100, Metropollitan Museum, Rogers Fund, 1995*

Maturana and Varela’s supposition that life itself is a set of constantly changing and interconnected processes (not a finite, objective, localized, and fixed entity) is a fascinating hypothesis that could never be tested by applying a traditional reductionist approach. It is fully compatible with a Buddhist understanding of the interdependent nature of relative phenomena.

Dr. Lynne Margulis also used a non-reductionist approach to develop her theories on the origins and evolution of life, specifically applied to eukaryotic cells—the cells of multicellular animals such as humans. It is now widely accepted that each of the organelles (parts) of our cells, such as mitochondria, nucleus, golgi bodies, etc., that work in a complex and interdependent fashion to maintain living functions and replication were once free-living single-celled organisms. At some point in the earth’s history, these single-celled creatures began to live together (symbiosis) in interdependent communities, forming new self-maintaining autopoietic systems. In complex animals such as humans, these communities of cells work in deeply interconnected systems to form organs such as hearts or lungs and are interconnected by networks we call the nervous system, immune system, circulatory system, etc. In support of Maturana and Varela’s theory, Margulis’ work encourages us to consider that a single living organism is also a complex set of nested, interdependent processes, ever-changing, interacting, and emerging as the phenomenon of a single living person, bird, or bear.⁷

No Separation Between Organism and Environment

Ecologists have studied in great detail how living systems, their populations, and their distributions are affected by changing conditions in the environment, such as nutrients, food, sunlight, water availability, etc. The traditional reductionist approach assumes that the living organism is a passive entity that is acted upon and reacts to its environment. However, many ecologists, including Maturana and Varela, examined the nature of the interaction of a living bacterium with its environment and concluded something very different. They recognized that a living cell is not just a passive actor, dependent on its environment, rather it also actively creates and affects conditions in its environment. The well-known biologist Capra wrote, “There is no ‘environment’ in some independent and abstract sense. Just as there is no organism without an environment, there is no environment without an organism. Organisms do not experience environments, they create them.”⁸

One of the most central teachings of Buddhism is that the experience of separation between the observer and the object of observation is not the true nature of phenomena. Lama Ole Nydahl writes, “In the same way that mind’s expression, its clarity, is misunderstood as an object and thus separate, its power of awareness, the experiencer, is misinterpreted as an ‘I.’”⁹ Similarly, Maturana and Varela conclude that one cannot observe a living organism as a finite and independent entity separate from its environment. According to Maturana and Varela, a living organism, its environment, and the process of living can only be understood as one totality.

Furthermore, there is growing evidence that suggests that life creates the environment necessary for life. Perhaps the most profound example of this phenomenon was postulated by James Lovelock in his Gaia Theory, which was developed independently of Maturana and Varela’s theory on autopoiesis. Lovelock was a NASA atmospheric chemist attempting to look for evidence of life on other planets by examining the unique composition of Earth’s present-day atmosphere (79% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, etc.), which is dramatically different from Earth’s nearest neighboring planets, Venus and Mars. Prior to Lovelock’s research, the dominant theory for Earth’s unique atmosphere was the so-called “Goldilocks” hypothesis—the Earth just happened to be the exact distance from the sun to be not too hot or too cold and have the exact amount of abiotic conditions such as the necessary amount of water, land, etc. to form our current atmosphere. This dominant theory was dependent on treating the atmosphere and life as separate, independent entities and life reacting or adapting to the atmosphere. Lovelock questioned this separation and recognized that the existence of life on Earth maintains the atmosphere at its current composition. His computer simulations showed that if one were to remove life from the Earth, the atmosphere would look remarkably similar to that of Venus or Mars.¹⁰

Going Beyond the Independent Observer Paradox: The Importance of Experience

Lama Ole Nydahl has often suggested that perhaps the most significant contribution of Buddhism to scientific inquiry is the influence of a Buddhist practice. Through a Buddhist practice, one trains to have an experience, beyond conceptual understanding, of the non-dual and interdependent nature of phenomenon. While the scientists explored in this article did not come to their work through Buddhist practice, they all challenged the assumption that an independent, objective observer is a prerequisite for scientific inquiry, drawing them closer to a Buddhist understanding of interdependence and expanding the bounds of their scientific fields.

In fact, Francisco Varela did connect with Buddhism later in his career. He met Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche after he developed the autopoiesis theory and was the founder of the Life and Mind Symposium series with the Dalai Lama, which explored connections between science and Buddhist understanding. In his own writings, he discussed becoming more open to the connections between his Buddhist view and his scientific work, and he understood the importance of his experiential practice. Later in his career, Varela began developing a theory of cognition and consciousness based upon the observations that life creates the environments it experiences. Although not as fully accepted as their theories on autopoiesis, these cognition theories are remarkably compatible with some of Buddhism’s teachings on the nature of perception and the phenomena perceived. In their theory on cognition, “the organisms contribute to the ‘creation’ of their environments” and “the interaction between the living organism and the environment is a dynamic one… where the living organism and the environment become one through cognitive interactions.” This understanding that beings’ perception of the world is dependent upon their inner emotional and perceptive state is becoming more and more recognized in the field of psychology. Before his untimely death in 2001, Varela was also developing a theory on the virtual nature of a self, as well as a theory on immunology that did not see the organism as a defender of invading diseases but instead explored the nature of disease and healing as a totality, with particular insights into what are called autoimmune diseases today.¹¹

If more scientists explored an approach to science that embraced the interdependent nature of phenomena, perhaps our fields of scientific inquiry could be expanded even further.