Choosing Reality

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Choosing Reality

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Choosing Reality - A Buddhist View of Physics and the Mind, by B. Alan Wallace

Wallace analyzes the positions of "Realism"--that science presents our best approximation of the natural world as it exists independently of human language and concepts--and that of instrumentalism, which maintains that humanity has no way of fathoming any reality independently of our modes of observation and conceptual frameworks. He then proposes a radical philosophical alternative based on the Buddhist Centrist view--that all phenomena are seen as dependently related events lending themselves to multiple interpretations, providing us with the freedom and responsibility to choose our reality within the context of valid experience.

Choosing Reality shows how Buddhist contemplative methods of investigating reality are relevant for modern physics and psychology. How shall we understand the relationship between the way we experience reality and the way science describes it? In examining this question, Alan Wallace discusses two opposing views: the realist view, which argues that scientific theories represent objective reality, and the instrumentalist view, which states that concepts cannot describe what exists independently of them. Finding both of these philosophies of science inadequate, the author explores the Buddhist middle way view and the relevance for modern physics of Buddhist contemplative methods of investigating reality. He also examines the ideas of body, mind, and reincarnation from the viewpoint of Tibetan Buddhism.