Choosing Reality: A Contemplative View of Physics and the Mind

Compares theories about the nature of objective reality, and describes the views of Buddhism on the ideas of mind, body, and reincarnation

Choosing Reality shows how Buddhist contemplative methods of investigating reality are relevant for modern physics and psychology. How shall we understand the relationship between the way we experience reality and the way science describes it? In examining this question, Alan Wallace discusses two opposing views: the realist view, which argues that scientific theories represent objective reality, and the instrumentalist view, which states that concepts cannot describe what exists independently of them. Finding both of these philosophies of science inadequate, the author explores the Buddhist middle way view and the relevance for modern physics of Buddhist contemplative methods of investigating reality. He also examines the ideas of body, mind, and reincarnation from the viewpoint of Tibetan Buddhism. Our designer's favorite book!

"A reflective philosophical analysis based on sound knowledge of physics and Buddhist thought."--Choice

"Choosing Reality shares the podium with The Tao of Physics and The Dancing Wu Li Masters and wears the gold medal. It is a triumphant commentary on the relationship between physics and mind, science and religion."--John Tigue, Dept. of Philosophy, Religion, Humanities, Daemen College

"B. Alan Wallace's proposed solution, using Buddhist understandings, to the philosophical dilemma of whether the world should be understood from a 'realist' or an 'instrumentalist' point of view. The former sees our scientific models of the world as independently real, the latter as only summaries of experience."--Research News & Opportunities in Science and Theology

Alan Wallace is the president of the Santa Barbara Institute for the Interdisciplinary Study of Consciousness.