Anthropology and Science

Here are my thoughts on two books that I've read of late:

One is called "Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour" by Kate Fox
(ISBN 0 340 81886 7)

In essence, she talks about the average English person's uneasiness in social situations. She describes it as "Social Dis-ease".

She also made a outline of core Englishness:

Reflexes = humour, moderation, hypocrisy
Values = fair play, courtesy, modesty
Outlooks = empiricism, eeyorishness, class-consciousness

So far, my experience confirms what she writes. I also got some insight into my own behaviour, because I became conscious of the fact that I share a lot of these English characteristics, just because I speak the English language and was raised in an Anglo-Saxon-influenced environment.

I know Marx would be smiling in his grave to know that I especially share the English trait of class consciousness: "A working-class hero is something to be...."

Here's a list of words that Fox put together that are deemed "forbidden words". They're forbidden because they betray class origins ( LC="lower" class / UC="upper" class):
LC UC
2 toilet vs lavatory
3 serviette vs napkin
4 dinner vs supper
5 settee vs sofa
6 lounge vs living room
7 sweet vs pudding

The second book that I've recently read is "The Fabric of the Cosmos" (ISBN: 0375727205) by physicist author Brian Greene. Obviously, I'm sure that it wasn't Greene's intention, but having read the book has significantly strengthened my confidence in the Dhamma.

Greene emphasizes that the universe has always been transforming itself from a states of relative order to states of ever increasing disorder. He calls this process "entropy", which corresponds to the Buddhist concepts of "anicca" (= impermanence).

We human beings seek order. Thus, Newton and even Einstein sought a predictable order in the universe. Of course, when confronted with the physical fact of Bohr's quantum mechanics and Heidegger's Uncertainty Principle, where there just isn't a predictable order, that caused Einstein concern ("God doesn't play with dice."). Things by their very nature are unpredictable. The quantum facts of life do not allow us to predict/"control" phenomena: sometimes the superstring vibrates this way, sometimes that way: it's random. This quantum fact is consistent with the Buddhist concept of "dukkha" (= things not running smoothly as we might prefer.)


Lastly, Greene at length discusses nonlocality (e.g. Bell's Theorem), in which two related (I think the term used in physics is "entangled") particles react to identically the same stimulus that however is only applied to one of them. The two particles although separated by perhaps huge distances react identically: e.g one particle's "spin" is changed at point A, then its related particle at a very distant point B is changed in exactly the same way instantaneously! Greene uses this laboratory result to demonstrate that our universe is a whole: every "thing" is connected to every other "thing". The division of the whole into distinct units is an illusion. We are all part of the self same fabric of the cosmos. This cosmic interconnectedness, of course, corresponds to the Buddhist concept of "anatta" (= non-self; non-separation of phenomena).