The Three-Culture Resolution and Hua-Yen Buddhism

Discussions on the conflict between humanities and Western scientific culture reveal a cryptic and myopic assumption. This conflict is, more accurately, one between the two cultures of Western humanism and Western science. Science has steadily eroded the Western humanistic/theological view that the earth is the center of the universe and that man plays a unique role in a spiritual hierarchy that places him above the angels but below God. Western humanists have intellectually accepted the fact that the earth is not the center of the cosmos but they have not abandoned the anthropocentric view in which humankind has an elevated position in a spiritual hierarchy lying outside the realm of the natural world. Science, in contrast, has advanced from a “divide and conquer” mentality into a more integrative mode described by string theory, chaos theory, ecology and a relativistic universe. In contrast to Western humanism, Eastern philosophy (the third culture), particularly in the form of Hua-Yen Buddhism, has made different assertions about man’s place in the universe. This form of Buddhism emphasizes the hyper-interrelatedness of all phenomena. Man is not placed in unique hierarchy in Hua-Yen because no hierarchy is posited. Western Science and Hua-Yen Buddhism appear to be on convergent paths from which Western humanism could benefit.