Towards open-minded science education

I have been recently reading Dalai Lama's reflections on science and spirituality. In fact, I was so relieved to discover that his point of view is very close to mine, and I am so happy to see that he is also one those very few people who take science and spirituality equally seriously. Otherwise I sometimes feel a little bit alone in this respect.

For my spiritually- or religiously-minded friends, I feel that virtually all of you are too excited by the transformation that this or that religion or method of meditation has brought into your life. Just because you know of a few dozen cases where prayer cured somebody from a deadly disease or chanting a mantra brought you love or money, just because we know that things like that are possible, contrary to the "official scientific position" -- as if there were such a thing -- does not imply that everything that we associate with science and technology is necessarily wrong, or is somehow less reliable than your own religious or meditative experience. As Dalai Lama has explained, special states of mind in Buddhism have also been discovered and studied with a particular empirical method. It was only after a person could reproduce a specific state with a specific practice, and if many other experienced meditators could reproduce the same states with the same practices, that such states were taken to be objectively existing and universal, at least for the human beings. Many religious and spiritual traditions also recognize our individual limitations because of the subjectivity of our perception, and also emphasize the need to stay open-minded, and not just blindly trust what feels right or true, no matter how strongly.

For my scientifically-minded friends, I mean that despite the apparent successes of science; despite the existence of antibiotics, airplanes, the Internet, and so forth, spiritual traditions such as Buddhism provide a comparable amount of insight about the world that is different from the scientific insight. In fact, for a person without scientific training, insights from spiritual traditions may be more accessible than a caricatured version of the theory of relativity, stories about black holes, or even oversimplified explanations of entropy and electromagnetism.

That is, I am not talking about the incorrect ideas people had thousands of years ago that were called "the science of the day" - that everything was made of fire, air, earth, and water. I am talking about what spiritual traditions can do for us right here, right now, in this present day, and specifically about the knowledge we can obtain from them.

In fact, the reason that we have airplanes and antibiotics is not that the science is so great. The reason is that we live in a causal world. In this sense sense has no particular priority over anything else; the world belongs to everyone, and everyone has a right to explore it with any kind of tools. I suspect that it is because of the way science is taught that we, many of us, get an impression that it is the only correct way of thinking about the world. I remember, for example, how I was taught the Law of Gravity, or the First Law of Newton. I was taught them as the laws, as the truth. I was taught that this is just so. I was given no experience of reflection or discovery --- something that is, as I understand, an integral part of the Buddhist and Judaic, and some other intellectual traditions.

The irony is that the First Law of Newton, that any body without a net force acting on it will remain still or keep moving at a constant pace in the same direction, is not even an empirical statement. There is no way whatsoever to design an experiment to test it, even approximately, for we have no way of computing the net force acting on a given object from the entire Universe, and if something is not moving at a constant pace, we can always assume that there was some other force that we did not account for.

In the light of Einstein's discoveries, Newton's laws are not even true. I cannot stress this enough: we are teaching in schools a version of the worldview that, we are convinced, is not true, because the full version seems a little bit overwhelming, and because we don't know how to teach it without teaching Newton's laws first. Perhaps this is why we still struggle with Einstein's relativity and quantum physics, that everyone studying physics has to repeat the same past mistakes. Interestingly, Dalai Lama, who was not specifically trained in science, is free from this delusion. He probably knows more about relativity and quantum physics than about classical physics --- and those also make much more sense in the Buddhist framework.

I had the same problem when I learned about electricity. I remember, when they taught me in schools that electricity is balls with plus and minus signs moving around, I thought that that was an oversimplified version for us, the kids, but that the teachers actually knew, what electricity was. In fact, we don't know what it is. Why don't we communicate this fact in our education? Why, instead, do we teach those mindless formulas that most people don't ever understand and won't ever apply, and those who do will have to relearn anyway? I received a large part of my math and science education in a high school and a college that are supposedly some of the best in Russia and, given Russia's position in this field, some of the best in the world.  

Why didn't anyone there teach me to think critically about the laws of physics, chemistry or biology? Why did I have to read Feyerabend, Popper, and texts on yoga, Buddhism, Daoism, and other traditions, to understand that these laws were discovered by people and may, in fact, not be true?

Even when these laws do work, which is quite often, why can't we take them a little softer, with a little less dogmatism? Why can't we wonder at this cause-and-relationship effect every time we discover it?

One thing I gained from Dalai Lama's reflections is a deeper understanding of the role of examples and metaphors in education in the Buddhist tradition. For example, one is taught that when one sees smoke, one can infer a fire and, hence, that people live there, and one can get food and shelter. Reflecting on such examples builds cognitive structures that give one a deep appreciation of the causality in the world we live in -- an appreciation that is enjoyed only by scientists, engineers, and perhaps philosophers of science in the West. Instead of giving instructions on how to change one's mental state from A to B, or instead of giving direct explanations of what one's consciousness is, or how the world operates, students are given metaphors or examples to reflect on, and this reflection changes their thinking, and in this way learning happens. The way I see it, in order to teach people X you don't have to tell people "X"; it won't even work. If you try to express X, in words or in writing it will become Y, and people will interpret it as Z. Instead, you expose people to something completely different - to Q - that has the effect of creating X in their mind.

This is a bit similar to the Socratic tradition, where asking questions is also used to educate. This is also similar to dance education, which is very much built on metaphors. Now some people are trying to incorporate "scientific explanations" while forgetting to consider the effect of these explanations on the consciousness of the students.

The main problem with "scientific explanations" is that the form of these explanations is usually as follows...

  X is true. This is just how the world works.

 ...which, of course, has nothing to do with science, as I have already explained. It definitely helps one to quickly build a model of the world, to know that food is here and danger is there. I might consider the validity of this style in e.g. Thou shalt not steal, or perhaps in The Earth revolves around the Sun. But if this style is employed in science education, science becomes reduced to a set of "laws" that are just true --- until somebody else comes and concludes that they are false. Even some seemingly simple and natural statements such as the Law of Conservation of Energy, turn out, upon closer inspection, to be complex webs of concepts and ideas, and require a lot of training, and a lot of careful attention to use and apply them sensibly. There is an unending stream of patents for a perpetuum mobile, and the reason for that is not that most people are amusing idiots. It is that the Law of Conservation of Energy is not as natural as it seems, and is not as obvious as it seems. In fact, in the future it can well be replaced by some other framework, if we conclude that the concept of energy as we have it is not accurate enough to reflect reality. Instead we are teaching our students to laugh at the ignorance of those proposing another source of infinite energy. Who is more ignorant, after all?

Everything that is taught on a large scale is a religion

Everything that is taught on a large scale is a religion.

It takes time to master anything. Because life is finite, teachers often start teaching before they have mastered their subject. When there are a lot of teachers, a lot of them end up being incompetent. Thus, there is a limit to the quality of public, large-scale education.

Systematic education changes students' thinking. Every subject has a set of postulates, and systematic education projects these postulates over and over and over, changing students' thinking. This is especially true with children; systematic education puts certain principles into their subconsciousness.

Most people are unable to transcend the limits of the view they have learned as children. This is because it takes time to learn to transcend these limits, and life is finite. Also, some of these people become teachers; and when you have a teacher who does not see the limits of the subject, it is so much more difficult to see them for the students.

Therefore whether we have physics, Judaism, democracy, or basic economics presented to millions of students, a certain set of principles ends up being mindlessly drilled into subconsciousness.

We can change our thinking by encountering someone with a different perspective; this is the easiest way. Therefore, the easiest defense against dogmatism is pluralism; having multiple schools of thought, so different children (or adults) are taught different things.

This is why there is no single best system, because any system, when taught on a large scale, deteriorates into near-religious dogmatism, for the reasons already explained. In particular, science needs to have some people educated in a religious way, so that at least we can notice certain tendencies in science, by reflecting on similar tendencies in those who have received religious education. Similarly, democracy needs non-democratic countries, or at least it needs people with authoritarian thinking, so that we can have a sense of perspective.


Everything that is taught on a large scale is religion. It does not have to be so-called. It just has to be repeated often enough.

Every sentence that is repeated extremely often in a given culture acquires near-religious meaning.
Examples: "common sense is not common" (means the world is full of idiots, but I am not one of them),  "forgive but not forget" (which usually means not forgive), "we hold these truths to be self-evident..." (then why say so?), "every man should have a son, write a book, and plant a tree" (not true, and also puts you in a selfish mode of thinking).
 Every word that is repeated extremely often in a given culture acquires near-religious meaning. It starts to appear more significant because there are more and more associations with this word in the mind (or connections in the brain), and it  almost automatically becomes a powerful symbol through sheer repetition.
Examples: God, science, rationality, common sense, law, money, democracy, 9/11, GPA, dating, security, sustainability, healthy lifestyle, work-life balance.


If a word is repeated extremely often, virtually nothing you believe about it is true.

If a sentence is repeated extremely often, virtually nothing you believe about it is true.


Everything that is taught on a large scale is religion.

On patterns, bias, religion, letting go, and the limits of human knowledge

We keep arguing if God has created the Universe, or if it has created itself; if there is life after death, and so on. However, we are so biased, we have so many subconscious assumptions --- that there is always one answer, or that there is always more than one answer, or that everything is relative --- that even if an angel came from the sky and gave us all the answers, we would misinterpret them.

Some say science has proved there is no God. How? Where is the proof? Do you know anything about proofs at all? Kurt Gödel
 has demonstrated by his Incompleteness Theorem that, at least assuming a certain formalism, there are lots of statements that
are true, but cannot be proven. If you claim to have a scientific mindset, then you have to accept the consequences: there may be lots of statements about, say, God, that may be true in a certain formal sense, but not provable from our finite set of premises. Of course, modern science is not written in first-order predicate logic, yet this is hardly an excuse. Furthermore, in the presence of billions of other people following this or that religion, how confident are you that they are all wrong? Do you seriously
think that just because there is electricity, antibiotics, and cellular phones, hence there should be no God?

Conversely, if, say, you really believe in Jesus, do you seriously think that billions of those who follow other religions are wrong? Wake up! It is not that the faith in Jesus is more correct; it is because of your subconscious or conscious bias and fear.  If your parents told you, for example, that you will go to Hell without Jesus, then, of course, you will keep making up all kinds of rationalizations. The bottom line is, it is not the particular religion, or the particular flavor of scientific materialism that is by itself true or false; nor do I see that truth is relative. We choose to perceive those theories as true or false, or likely, or unlikely, or nonsensical, or self-evident because of our beliefs about the world; largely because of the particular culture and the particular family that we grew up in. 99% of the debates about the nature of
the Universe, absolute vs. relative truth, purpose in life, the origin of life, and so forth, are just battles between different subconscious patterns in different people; these debates have nothing --- nothing to do with discovering truth.

The very idea of truth is different for different people, and also depends on lots of subconscious constructs and assumptions, and on what you encountered in the culture and in the family during your childhood, and whatever thoughts and experiences you've had during the rest of your life. Same goes for the idea of the purpose of life. The idea of purpose is also something we've learned; and the very question appears to be nonsensical.
The concept of "purpose" is very much linked with survival; but now we are asking about the purpose of survival --- the purpose of having purposes in the first place.  We are stretching the concept beyond applicability. Just because we can conceive of
something such as "the purpose of life" doesn't mean that it exists or even that it is not self-contradictory. For example, in mathematics we can conceive of a set containing all sets as its element, but such an object is self-contradictory and, we conclude, thus cannot exist.

Most of us most of the time are unable to transcend our own thinking and perception.  We look for "absolute truth", but this very idea was created by our fear of death. We look for "salvation", but this idea was also created by our fear of death.
We complain about democracy in the USA, but "democracy" itself is an idea that we have learned. We argue that North Korea is an evil state, but the idea of "evil" is also something that we have learned. Every human and every state is 99% governed by its habitual patterns, and North Korea is not different; "evil" does
not actually exist, it's just a term habitually used to denote somebody you really don't like. It is learned in the childhood and linked to fear and to the perception of your own weakness as a limited human being.

We don't know if there is God --- even the concept of existence is questionable, as it is something we had to learn, and each of us thus has a different concept of what it means for something to exist --- but we know there are healthy and unhealthy patterns
associated with this idea. This is what we can take care of. There are healthy and unhealthy patterns associated with the ideas of "democracy", "evil", "purpose of life", and so forth. The whole conflict between Israel and Palestine, for instance, is just one huge pattern. It's not that the Jews are wrong, or that the Arabs or wrong, or that some people are making money from the war, or that the U.S. wants the war to continue, or that Russia wants it to continue, or that some terrorist groups want it to continue. Don't take it personally; it's just a pattern.

After reading this you probably still think that, all this not withstanding, you believe in what modern science has to say, that we have to be random collections of molecules governed by the laws of physics and our DNA, or that Israel is right because it is a real, democratic, XXI-st century state, or that life really does have a purpose because "you know there is something out there", or that Obama is really a terrible president because what we have here is not like your idea of democracy at all. Letting go is always scary. It involves saying "I really don't know the truth. Maybe my parents were wrong. Maybe my country was wrong. Perhaps, I was wrong as well."

Remember Romeo and Juliet. There everyone understood that the struggle was just a pattern, and they still carried it on, out of tradition, because it felt so natural.