Editor:
The Opinion column, “Searching for Truth From the Lotus Position,” in the Sept. 6 Chronicle, reflects, to my mind, the attitudes that make diversity courses mandatory.
When you enter a course with a closed view of what it can teach you (“I was merely looking for a new way to exercise and gain flexibility”), you will not experience the full value of what it offers to teach. When you close yourself to but a single paradigm, you lose the virtues of alternative paradigms.
Ashley?s column reflects a traditional Western view regarding science as the only “true” descriptor, and it relegates other forms (such as myth, and, despite her disclaimer, religion) to positions of faulty science. More often than not, however, science does not prove, it describes. No one has proved gravity. All science does is provide a very good description of why objects seem to not fall off of the earth.
I do not mean to appear to bash science, but a world view limited to, and judged solely by, the values of science is a stagnant one. Many alternative systems exist?valid systems that explain valid phenomenon, and we lose much when we blind ourselves to them.
If multiple systems seem to correspond, and should perhaps science complement an aspect of yoga, the answer should ideally not be disgust, but excitement: Look! We’ve found what we both were describing! I understand you a bit better now!
Amber Wulle, Senior, Undeclared