This Dialogue explores contemporary understandings of the natural world that have arisen through groundbreaking advances in physics and astrophysics made during the 20th century. These advances have exerted a profound influence on our conception of the world, changing it fundamentally from the views that reigned until the end of the 19th century. For example, through the careful study of atomic processes, quantum physics has raised deep epistemological and ontological questions, which are addressed with great sophistication and profundity in the Madhyamaka view expounded in Tibetan Buddhism. Likewise, general relativity, when taken together with recent discoveries concerning the distribution and movement of stars, has fundamentally transformed our understandings of space, time, and the evolution of the universe.
LOCATION: Dharamsala, India
Participants
His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama
Honorary Board Chair
George Greenstein, PhD
Amherst College
Piet Hut
Princeton
Arthur Zajonc, PhD
Mind & Life Institute
