ABSTRACT
In Buddhism and Science: A Guide for the Perplexed, Donald Lopez notes that in the course of the Western interest in Buddhism, different versions of Buddhism have been compared to different versions of science, each comparison emphasizing their similarities (Lopez 2008: 31-2). In the late nineteenth century, the interest was in the Buddhist idea of causality and its compatibility with the mechanistic world view of science. After the Second World War, interest shifted to Buddhist emptiness philosophy and Einsteinian relativity. Currently, the attention is on Buddhism and cognitive science, particularly the use of brain imaging to measure the effects of Buddhist meditation. In each of these episodes we have heard that Buddhism is like science or that science confirms Buddhism. In this, Lopez sees a play of interests that have little to do with Buddhism or science themselves. How else could it be that the outcome is always the same – that is, Buddhism and science agree with each other – despite their many different versions?
