AAAS: Darwin the Buddhist

[bananas]

Nature magazine is blogging the AAAS meeting:

AAAS: Darwin the Buddhist

Ordinarily, Paul Ekman is to be found doing rigorous, detailed studies of facial expression, body movement, emotion and deception. And his results are not just academic. These days he is an emeritus professor of psychology at the University of California, San Francisco, but he and his associates still give courses on how to recognize concealed emotions via subtle changes in facial expressions, body language and such--with a roster of students that include police and national security officials, corporate negotiators and health professionals. He's also the scientific adviser to the FoxTV series Lie to Me.

Not surprisingly, given his interests, Ekman is very familiar with Charles Darwin's 1872 book, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. And a few years ago, he found himself discussing Darwin's views on one particular emotion, compassion, with the Dalai Lama.

"Darwin said that!?" Ekman remembers the Dalai Lama exclaiming at one point.

Further discussions--which eventually resulted in a book coauthored by the two men, Emotional Awareness (2008) -- revealed that Darwin's ideas were virtually identical to Buddhist teachings on the subject. For example, Darwin believed that the seeds for compassion lie in the mother-infant bond. ("Focus on the 'other' as 'mother'," says the Dalai Lama.) Darwn likewise believed that compassion is reinforced by the fact that when I see you suffer, it makes me suffer. ("In helping you, I help myself more," says the Dalai Lama.) And Darwin wrote that the highest moral value is to be concerned for the welfare of all sentient beings--a phrasing that matches almost word for word the teachings in Buddhist texts, translations of which were available in England at the time.

Perhaps the convergence of ideas was a coincidence, says Ekman. But in his AAAS talk, he listed eight possible ways that Darwin might have known about Buddhist teachings, and been influenced by them. These include contacts via his wife, various friends, and the aforementioned texts. "It's like a historical detective story," says Ekman.

Posted by Mitch Waldrop on February 14, 2009 10:14 PM

[Hekate]

1. Pleased to KnR. This is very cool. nt

[grantcart]

2. Also Darwin's "survival of the fittest" didn't mean survival of the most vicious

Fit means more like fitting in a jigsaw puzzle.


A social unit that is compassionate and more effective in nurturing its young to procreation is more likely to survive natural selection than a collection of violent individuals that have excessive strength and fighting skills.


Darwin was raised a Unitarian and considered becoming an Anglican parson because he didn't like his medical studies. The loss of three of his children seemed to shape his aversion to the belief of a god that was involved in daily human life.

[BlooInBloo]

4. Actually, "fittest" just means "whoever breeds" - for *whatever* reason.

"fittest" is a PURELY retrospective compliment. It doesn't mean some mean-spirited viciousness. It doesn't mean some namby-pamby "harmoniously converging with peace and love in one's environment". It just means whoever is ends up there. Regardless of the specific adaptations that resulted in it.

And it was evolution that shook his religiosity more than anything.

[bananas]

5. Sometimes called "survival of what fits"

or "finding your niche".

[BlooInBloo]

3. (facepalm)

[TZ]

6. Why must famous scientists always have people attempt to ascribe them

to their own personal religious beliefs? Why is that necessary? This is what irritates me about Einstein too.
Darwin was a scientist and made a profound impact on how we see the world. I don't really care what his "spirituality" was.
To me, this undermines his work...seems like a person and their work can't be validated unless he can be fit into someone's religous wordview.
And people wonder why atheists like me get cranky..this bs is why.

[bananas]

8. Dalai Lama the Darwinian

From an article in the UK Times:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article5739057.ece

February 15, 2009
Charles Darwin 'may have been inspired by Tibetan Buddhism'
Mark Henderson, Science Editor

<snip>

“What I’ve become interested in in the last few years is Darwin’s work on compassion and morality, which is even less known than his work on expression,” Dr Ekman told the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Chicago. “And the amazing coincidence, if it is a coincidence, is that his views on compassion and morality are identical to the Tibetan Buddhist view.

“When I read to the Dalai Lama some of Darwin’s passages, he said: ‘I am now calling myself a Darwinian'.

<snip>

Darwin knew of Tibetan Buddhism through several routes, Dr Ekman said. His close friend Joseph Hooker travelled to Tibet in 1847, and corresponded regularly with Darwin; Darwin’s wife, Emma, was also fascinated with Buddhism. She once described a grandson as the “grand lama” because he was so calm and solemn.

Dr Ekman said that he did not know whether Darwin derived his views from Buddhist influence, or whether the similarity was a coincidence. “I am certainly not saying Darwin was a Buddhist,” he said. “But his view on the nature of compassion is identical in almost the exact words to the view of Tibetan Buddhism.”

[groovedaddy]

9. Buddhism is not really that much about "spirituality" - it is far more a combination

of philosophy and psychology.

[bananas]

10. This is about emotions, not religious beliefs or spirituality.

There are important distinctions between these subjects.
For example, you say that you are cranky.
That's an expression of emotions, not an expression of religious beliefs or spirituality.

[Orrex]

7. He also wrote The Origin of Species on his Blackberry

Nothing like a bit of revisionist storytelling.

:eyes: