Originally Posted by
rett2
I have the greatest respect for both science and for introspective practices. As far as I'm concerned they are equally valid ways of approaching an ultimately unfathomable reality, but they have different purposes. Science does not erode, damage or take away anything from introspective practice. What science can do is take away social capital from religious or philosophical figures who base their power or status on dogmas about how the world is constructed.
Determining structures by X-ray crystallography involves processes where electromagnatic radation is viewed as quantized particles (the generation of x-rays) and as waves (diffraction). Both are useful approximations, but the underlying reality is unfathomable to use. We can't picture the wave function (unsquared), as it is inamenable to our intuition. By analogy, I suggest that experience as we perceive it, and the models of experimental science are also equally valid ways of viewing reality that do not contradict one another. However that goes both ways. Meditators can't tell scientists what physical reality is composed of and how it works, and scientists cannot tell meditators what life means. (Not just meditators, but any thinking person in the arts and humanities or anyone just engaged with the quandries of life.)
Even if science measures the brain waves of meditators, or learns to model a human being down to tiniest level, it will never touch meaning and experience.