Science and Nonviolence
Let’s get a flavor of “positive science” with two examples.
First, a study of rhesus monkeys by the leading scientist in this field, Frans de Waal, in his fascinating book, Good Natured: the Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996, p. 178):
De Waal and his colleagues put a group of stumptail monkeys in with a colony of their macaque cousins, the notoriously aggressive rhesus. Stumptails are calmer and more cooperative, so the scientists wanted to see how long they would last with the aggressive rhesus. Imagine their surprise when the stumptails not only stood their ground, refusing to yield or to fight back, but the rhesus began to adopt stumptail behavior! More surprising still, when the stumptails were taken out of the colony, scientists expected the rhesus monkeys to revert to their original behavior, but they did not — the rhesus’ culture had actually changed, and they retained the culture of the stumptails. This example illustrates that deep in our evolutionary inheritance, there are powerful tendencies towards nonviolence that can shift cultures. Even cultures that can seem deeply entrenched in widespread aggression and violence can change.
Second example:
It is known that if one sees a picture of a face from a different race than our own, a deep reaction occurs in the limbic system of the brain correlated with the “flight or fight” reaction. Primitive stuff. Very discouraging. But two researchers at Princeton, Mary Wheeler and Susan Fiske, had the bright idea to “prime” their subjects with a simple question: “Does the person you’re about to see like coffee or tea?” The limbic system reaction was virtually suppressed. Rehumanization, anyone? (See their article, “Controlling Racial Prejudice. Social-Cognitive Goals Affect Amygdala and Stereotype Activation,” in Psychological Science, Vol 16, Issue 1, pp. 56-63).
Once again, Gandhi is a towering figure in all of this, because with his Vedantic worldview there is no difference between scientific and spiritual reality. What we came to consider science in the West was the science of the outside world; the wisdom tradition deals with the science of the world within. In other words, nonviolence IS a science, something that can be tested and verified. Gandhi called his autobiography My Experiments With Truth, and he treated his application of nonviolence as a scientific experiment. He was always aware that he himself was the instrument of experimentation, as quantum theorists were also discovering. The level of purity of the instrument — himself — would determine the results. Throughout his life, Gandhi experimented in all ways, from the way he ate and slept to the strategies he employed at the political level, always remaining open to learning more.