Buddhist Perspectives
Buddhism arose around 500 B.C.E. as a practical response to the trouble and suffering that characterize the human condition. Uniquely among traditions concerned with those issues, Buddhism has never offered a final description of ultimate reality; it also has not proposed a universal fixed solution to the persistent and concrete problems of solely human trouble and suffering. Instead, Buddhism has developed a general yet systematic strategy for generating truly sustainable resolutions of the trouble and suffering that afflict all sentient beings in their specific contexts.
Significant common ground with the traditions of science and technology, particularly as they have developed in the West, is suggested by Buddhism's commitments to developing insight into patterns of causal relationship; challenging both common sense and other, more sophisticated forms of presupposition and authority; construing knowledge as a cumulative and consensual process; and devising concrete interventions to redirect patterns of human activity. However, Buddhism traditionally also has avoided any form of reductionism (materialist or otherwise), countering claims of both privileged subjectivity and absolute objectivity, inverting the presumed priority of facts over values, identifying the limits of (especially instrumental) rationality, and cultivating limitless capacities for emotionally inflected relational transformation. These commonalities and differences suggest that Buddhism is well positioned to complement but also critically evaluate science and technology as epistemic (knowledge-centered) and practical enterprises.
