Nalanda Dialogue series volume II

Identity In Buddhism and Quantum Theory

The notion of identity configures itself us a salient ingredient of our our understanding of reality and we become Self or faithful to our identity with ourselves through the acquisition of Language. So the notion of identity serves as pivotal in the interplay of Language and reality with a built-in logic But this Human perspective of identity and self continued to be challenged in different philosophical traditions, particularly in Buddhism. Modern development of quantum theory, particularly after the advent of information theory ever since the 90s of the last century, corroborated some interesting overlaps with the traditional philosophical concerns of identity and individuation. In fact ever since the development of the formal languages of quantum mechanics during the third decade of the last century, founding fathers were engaged in debate about the meaning of this new-born theory. The celebrated The celebrated paper of Einstein with Boris Podolosky and Nathan Rosen in 1935 about the incompleteness of quantum mechanics is known to have set the background of a lively debate which, coupled with the work of John Bell in 1967 gnarled its way through a fuzzy domain of overlap between physics and philosophy based crucially on the notion of identity and sameness.

Editors: Debajyoti Gangopadhya & Prof Binod Kumar Choudhary

Publisher: Navanalanda Mahavihara, Nalanda