Comparisons and syntheses of Eastern and Western biophilosophical theories.
Item
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Title
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Comparisons and syntheses of Eastern and Western biophilosophical theories.
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Identifier
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AAI9315450
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identifier
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9315450
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Creator
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Cai, Nelson Y.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Stanley N. Salthe
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Date
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1993
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Biology, General | Biology, Genetics | Religion, Philosophy of
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Abstract
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There are three major purposes of this study. The first is to introduce some basic Eastern biophilosophical theories to Western scientists and philosopher. These are mainly Buddhist ones, which are here dealt with as biophilosophical theories, "metabiology", or "universal biology" rather than religion. The second purpose is to make comparisons between biophilosophical theories of the East and the West, while the third is to attempt by synthesis to begin developing some new approaches and hypotheses to complement both of these approaches.;It is considered that the central concepts of Buddhism are descriptions of the nature, development, inheritance, and evolution of life as well as discussions of how to self-regulate, self-control, and self-improve our lives.;There are some differences and also some similarities between the biophilosophical theories of the East and the West. It is thought that the basic difference between the two is the point of emphasis. Ontologically, it may be said that there are views of both the noumenon or absolute and the phenomenon or relativity of the universe and life in the West as well as in the East. Eastern views emphasize more the noumenon/absolute, while Western theories are more concerned with the phenomenon/relativity. In the West, we find the abstract concepts of Plato's eidos, Aristotle's dynamis, and Kant's thing-in-itself, compared to the concepts of the absolute in the TaoistWu-Wei and Wu-Ji, Confucian Reason and Chi, and Buddhist bhutatathata and nirvana. Epistemologically, it may be said that there are analytical views of both subjective mind and objective material in the East as well as the West. The holistic view and inner, mental or regressive observation are emphasized in the East, while the analytic view and outer, physical or deductive natural observation are emphasized in the West.;Lacking the concept of the absolute, holistic, and unified noumenon, the problem of mind-body/mind-material, and/or the problems of Vitalism, Organicism, and Mechanism or Reductionism, arise in Western biophilosophical theories since Aristotle and Democritus to the present time. In the East, these problems cannot arise because their theories unify the subjective mind and the objective material or physical world as two aspects of the noumenon/bhutatathata or pure-mind/true-life.;On the basis of comparisons of the biophilosophical theories of the East and the West, a newly synthesized three-hierarchical definition as well as a new dialectic-unified-energetical-monistic system of life, which I call Bio-Meanism, is herein suggested. Three new hypothetical approaches of life, Bio-Determinism, Neo-Geneticism, and Neo-evolutionism are presented, in which two systems of genes, germlines, genotypes and phenotypes, and two types of inheritance and evolution are involved.;Finally, the value of a hoped-for second Renaissance based on a future development of an integrated Eastern and Western biophilosophical theory is also discussed.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
