此书由物理学教授所写，目前已出版到第四版，2004年还出版了阿拉伯语版。或许某一天能够出版中文版。我读的是第一版，即1975年版。由于是摘录，没有给出具体页码，希望不要对此点提意见。总体觉得，此书很值得我们具有东方文化背景者反思。

 
Frifiof Capra, The Tao of Physics-An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism. Shambhala Publications, Inc. 1975
2000年出版了该书的第四版。

作者情况
Fritjof Capra has done research in theoretical high-energy physics at the University of Paris; the University of California; Stanford University; and Imperial College, London. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Vienna. He is currently a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley.

一些人的评价
"A brilliant best-seller. . . . Lucidly analyzes the tenets of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism to show their striking parallels with the latest discoveries in cyclotrons."—New York Magazine

"A pioneering book of real value and wide appeal."—Washington Post

"Fritjof Capra, in The Tao of Physics , seeks . . . an integration of the mathematical world view of modern physics and the mystical visions of Buddha and Krishna. Where others have failed miserably in trying to unite these seemingly different world views, Capra, a high-energy theorist, has succeeded admirably. I strongly recommend the book to both layman and scientist."—V. N. Mansfield, Physics Today

"I have been reading the book with amazement and the greatest interest, recommending it to everyone I meet, and as often as possible, in my lectures. I think [Capra has] done a magnificent and extremely important job."—Joseph Campbell

Hinduism印度教，Buddhism佛教，Taoism道教，Zen禅

The concepts of modern physics often show surprising parallels to the ideas expressed in the religious philosophies of the Far East. Although these parallels have not, as yet, been discussed extensively, they have been noticed by some of the great physicists of our century when they came in contact with Far Eastern culture during their lecture tours to India, China and Japan. The following three quotations serve as examples :

The general notions about human understanding . . . which are illustrated by discoveries in atomic physics are not in the nature of things wholly unfamiliar, wholly unheard of, or new. Even in our own culture they have a history, and in Buddhist and Hindu thought a more considerable and central place. What we shall find is an exemplification, an encouragement, and a refinement of old wisdom.’
Julius Robert Oppenheimer奥本海默 原子弹之父 曼哈顿计划学术领导人

For a parallel to the lesson of atomic theory . . . [we must turn to those kinds of epistemological problems with which already thinkers like the Buddha and Lao Tzu have been confronted, when trying to harmonize our position as spectators and actors in the great drama of existence.
Niels Bohr波尔 1922年诺贝尔物理奖

The great scientific contribution in theoretical physics that has come from Japan since the last war may be an indication of a certain relationship between philosophical ideas in the tradition of the Far East and the philosophical substance of quantum theory.
Werner Heisenberg海森堡 或海森贝格 1932年诺贝尔物理奖

In contrast to the mechanistic Western view, the Eastern view of the world is ‘organic’. For the Eastern mystic, all things and events perceived by the senses are interrelated, connected, and are but different aspects or manifestations of the same Physics ultimate reality.

In our Western culture, which is still dominated by the mechanistic, fragmented view of the world, an increasing number of people have seen this as the underlying reason for the widespread dissatisfaction in our society, and many have turned to Eastern ways of liberation. It is interesting, and perhaps not too surprising, that those who are attracted by Eastern mysticism, who consult the I Ching易经 and practise Yoga瑜伽 or other forms of meditation沉思、冥想, in general have a marked anti-scientific attitude.

The Eastern mystics repeatedly insist on the fact that the ultimate reality can never be an object of reasoning or of demonstrable knowledge. It can never be adequately described by words, because it lies beyond the realms of the senses and of the intellect from which our words and concepts are derived. The Upanishads say about it:
There the eye goes not, Speech goes not, nor the mind.
We know not, we understand not
How one would teach it.
Lao Tzu老子, who calls this reality the Tao, states the same fact in the opening line of the Tao Te Ching道德经: ‘The Tao that can be expressed is not the eternal Tao.’道可道，非常道。

In physics, knowledge is acquired through the process of scientific research which can be seen to proceed in three stages. The first stage consists in gathering experimental evidence about the phenomena to be explained. In the second stage, the experimental facts are correlated with mathematical symbols and a mathematical scheme is worked out which interconnects these symbols in a precise and consistent way. At this stage, physicists may be satisfied when they have found a mathematical scheme and know how to use it to predict experiments. But eventually, they will want to talk about their results to non-physicists and will therefore have to express them in plain language. This means they will have to formulate a model in ordinary language which interprets their mathematical scheme. Even for the physicists themselves, the formulation of such a verbal model, which constitutes the third stage of research, will be a criterion of the understanding they have reached.

Rational knowledge and rational activities certainly constitute the major part of scientific research, but are not all there is to it. The rational part of research would, in fact, be useless if it were not complemented by the intuition that gives scientists new insights and makes them creative. These insights tend to come suddenly and, characteristically, not when sitting at a desk working out the equations, but when relaxing, in the bath, during a walk in the woods, on the beach, etc. 追求长时间知识积累、冥想产生的顿悟。

The question which puzzled physicists so much in the early stages of atomic theory was how electromagnetic radiation could simultaneously consist of particles (i.e. of entities confined to a very small volume) and of waves, which are spread out over a large area of space.
Neither language nor imagination could deal with this kind of reality very well. Eastern mysticism has developed several different ways of dealing with the paradoxical aspects of reality. Whereas they are bypassed in Hinduism through the use of mythical language, Buddhism and Taoism tend to emphasize the paradoxes rather than conceal them.追求矛盾的统一 The main Taoist scripture, Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching, is written in an extremely puzzling, seemingly illogical style. It is full of intriguing contradictions and its compact, powerful, and extremely poetic language is meant to arrest the reader’s mind and throw it off its familiar tracks of logical reasoning.
Chinese and Japanese Buddhists have adopted this Taoist technique of communicating the mystical experience by simply exposing its paradoxical character. When the Zen master Daito saw the Emperor Codaigo, who was a student of Zen, the master said :
We were parted many thousands of kalpas ago, yet we have not been separated even for a moment. We are facing each other all day long, yet we have never met.

儒教和道教之关系
Confucianism and Taoism. Confucianism was the philosophy of social organization, of common sense and practical knowledge. It provided Chinese society with a system of education and with strict conventions of social etiquette. One of its main purposes was to form an ethical basis for the traditional Chinese family system with its complex structure and its rituals of ancestor worship. Taoism, on the other hand, was concerned primarily with the observation of nature and the discovery of its Way, or Tao. Human happiness, according to the Taoists, is achieved when men follow the natural order, acting spontaneously and trusting their intuitive knowledge. These two trends of thought represent opposite poles in Chinese philosophy, but in China they were always seen as poles of one and the same human nature, and thus as complementary. Confucianism was generally emphasized in the education of children who had to learn the rules and conventions necessary for life in society, whereas Taoism used to be pursued by older people in order to regain and develop the original spontaneity which had been destroyed by social conventions. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Neo-Confucian school attempted a synthesis of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism, which culminated in the philosophy of Chu Hsi,朱熹 one of the greatest of all Chinese thinkers. Chu Hsi was an outstanding philosopher who combined Confucian scholarship with a deep understanding of Buddhism and Taoism, and incorporated elements of all three traditions in his philosophical synthesis.

有关翻译的得失，中外都适合
Since the Chinese philosophers expressed themselves in a language which was so well suited for their way of thinking, their writings and sayings could be short and inarticulate, and yet rich in suggestive images. It is clear that much of this imagery must be lost in an English translation. A translation of a sentence from the Tao Te Ching, for example, can only render a small part of the rich complex of ideas contained in the original, which is why different translations from this controversial book often look like totally different texts. As Fung Yu-Lan 冯友兰has said, ‘It needs a combination of all the translations already made and many others not yet made, to reveal the richness of the Lao-Tzu and the Confucian Analects in their original form.‘

对易经的评价和重视
This system is elaborated in the I Ching, or Book of Changes. The Book of Changes is the first among the six Confucian Classics and must be considered as a work which lies at the very heart of Chinese thought and culture. The authority and esteem it has enjoyed in China throughout thousands of years is comparable only to those of sacred scriptures, like the Vedas or the Bible, in other cultures. The noted sinologue Richard Wilhelm （汉学家，德国传教士，蔚礼贤） begins the introduction to his translation of the book with the following words:
The Book of Changes-I Ching in Chinese-is unquestionably one of the most important books in the world’s literature. Its origin go&back to mythical antiquity, and it has occupied the attention of the most eminent scholars of China down to the present day. Nearly all that is Greatest and most significant in the three thousand years of Chinese cultural history has either taken its inspiration from this book, or has exerted an influence on the interpretation of its text. Therefore it may safely be said that the seasoned wisdom of thousands of years has gone into the making of the I Ching.
The Book of Changes is thus a work that has grown organically over thousands of years and consists of many layers stemming from the most important periods of Chinese thought.

Niels Bohr波尔于1937年访问中国，对中国文化的敬仰
This notion of complementarity has become an essential part of the way physicists think about nature and Bohr has often suggested that it might be a useful concept also outside the field of physics; in fact, the notion of complementarity proved to be extremely useful 2,500 years ago. It played an essential role in ancient Chinese thought which was based on the insight that opposite concepts stand in a polar-or complementary-relationship to each other. The Chinese sages represented this complementarity of opposites by the archetypal poles yin and yang and saw their dynamic interplay as the essence of all natural phenomena and all human situations. Niels Bohr was well aware of the parallel between his concept of complementarity and Chinese thought. When he visited China in 1937, at a time when his interpretation of quantum theory had already been fully elaborated, he was deeply impressed by the ancient Chinese notion of polar opposites, and from that time he maintained an interest in Eastern culture. Ten years later, Bohr was knighted as an acknowledgment of his outstanding achievements in science and important contributions to Danish cultural life; and when he had to choose a suitable motif for his coat-of-arms his choice fell on the Chinese symbol of t’ai-chi 太极representing the complementary relationship of the archetypal opposites yin and yang. In choosing this symbol for his coat-of-arms together with the inscription Contraria sunt complementa (Opposites are complementary), Niels Bohr acknowledged the profound harmony between ancient Eastern wisdom and modern Western science.（原书第十一章末）

第九章Zen禅

In the words of a famous Zen saying:
Before you study Zen, mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers; while you are studying Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and rivers are no longer rivers; but once you have had enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and rivers again rivers.

In the words of Robert Oppenheimer, If we ask, for instance, whether the position of the electron remains the same, we must say ‘no’; if we ask whether the electron’s position changes with time, we must say ‘no’; if we ask whether the electron is at rest, we must say ‘no’; if we ask whether it is in motion, we must say ‘no’.’
The reality of the atomic physicist, like the reality of the Eastern mystic, transcends the narrow framework of opposite concepts. Oppenheimer’s words thus seem to echo the words of the Upanishads,
It moves. It moves not.
It is far, and It is near.
It is within all this,
And It is outside of all this.

时空观
Classical physics was based on the notion both of an absolute, three-dimensional space, independent of the material objects it contains, and obeying the laws of Euclidean geometry, and of time as a separate dimension which again is absolute and flows at an even rate, independent of the material world.
In the West, these notions of space and time were so deeply rooted in the minds of philosophers and scientists that they were taken as true and unquestioned properties of nature.

Eastern philosophy, unlike that of the Greeks, has always maintained that space and time are constructs of the mind. The Eastern mystics treated them like all other intellectual concepts; as relative, limited, and illusory. In a Buddhist text, for example, we find the words, It was taught by the Buddha, oh Monks, that . . . the past, the future, physical space, . . . and individuals are nothing but names, forms of thought, words of common usage, merely superficial realities Thus in the Far East, geometry never attained the status it had in ancient Greece, although this does not mean that the Indians and Chinese had little knowledge of it. They used it extensively in building altars of precise geometrical shapes, in measuring the land and mapping out the heavens, but never to determine abstract and eternal truths. This philosophical attitude is also reflected in the fact that ancient Eastern science generally did not find it necessary to fit nature into a scheme of straight lines and perfect circles. Joseph Needham’s李约瑟 remarks about Chinese astronomy are very interesting in this connection
The Chinese [astronomers] did not feel the need for [geometricall] forms of explanation-the component organisms in the universal organism followed their Tao each according to its own nature, and their motions could be dealt with in the essentially ‘non-representational’ form of algebra. The Chinese were thus free from that obsession of European astronomers for the circle as the most perfect figure, . . . nor did they experience the medieval prison of the crystalline spheres
Thus the ancient Eastern philosophers and scientists already had the attitude which is so basic to relativity theory-that our notions of geometry are not absolute and unchangeable properties of nature, but intellectual constructions.

Like modern physicists, Buddhists see all objects as processes in a universal flux and deny the existence of any material substance. This denial is one of the most characteristic features of all schools of Buddhist philosophy. It is also characteristic of Chinese thought which developed a similar view of things as transitory stages in the ever-flowing Tao and was more concerned with their interrelations than with their reduction to a fundamental substance. While European philosophy tended to find reality in substance,’ writes Joseph Needham, ‘Chinese philosophy tended to find it in relation.“
In the dynamic world views of Eastern mysticism and of modern physics, then, there is no place for static shapes, or for any material substance. The basic elements of the universe are dynamic patterns; transitory stages in the ‘constant flow of transformation and change’, as Chuang Tzu 庄子calls it.

In the Eastern view, the reality underlying all phenomena is beyond all forms and defies all description and specification. It is therefore often said to be formless, empty or void. But this emptiness is not to be taken for mere nothingness. It is, on the contrary, the essence of all forms and the source of all life. Thus the Upanishads say,
Brahman is life. Brahman is joy. Brahman is the Void . . .空
Joy, verily, that is the same as the Void.
The Void, verily, that is the same as joy.
Buddhists express the same idea when they call the ultimate reality Sunyata-‘Emptiness’, or ‘the Void-and affirm that it is a living Void which gives birth to all forms in the phenomenal world. The Taoists ascribe a similar infinite and endless creativity to the Tao and, again, call it empty. The Tao of Heaven is empty and formless’ says the Kuan-tzu管子（管庄） and Lao Tzu uses several metaphors to illustrate this emptiness. He often compares the Tao to a hollow valley, or to a vessel which is for ever empty and thus has the potential of containing an infinity of things.
In spite of using terms like empty and void, the Eastern sages make it clear that they do not mean ordinary emptiness when they talk about Brahman, Sunyata or Tao, but, on the contrary, a Void which has an infinite creative potential. Thus, the Void of the Eastern mystics can easily be compared to the quantum field of subatomic physics. Like the quantum field, it gives birth to an infinite variety of forms which it sustains and, eventually, reabsorbs.

The phenomenal manifestations of the mystical Void, like the subatomic particles, are not static and permanent, but dynamic and transitory, coming into being and vanishing in one ceaseless dance of movement and energy.

In Chinese philosophy, the field idea is not only implicit in the notion of the Tao as being empty and formless, and yet producing all forms, but is also expressed explicitly in the concept of ch’i. 气 This term played an important role in almost every Chinese school of natural philosophy and was particularly important in Neo-Confucianism; the school which attempted a synthesis of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism.

The framework which seems to be most appropriate for the description of hadrons and their interactions is called ‘S-matrix theory’. Its key concept, the ‘S matrix’, was originally proposed structure which seems to be ideally suited to describe the strong interactions. The S matrix is a collection of probabilities for all possible reactions involving hadrons. It derives its name from the fact that one can imagine the whole assemblage of possible hadron reactions arranged in an infinite array of the kind mathematicians call a matrix. The letter S is a remainder of the original name ‘scattering matrix’ which refers to collision-or ‘scattering’-processes, the majority of particle reactions. In practice, of course, one is never interested in the entire collection of hadron processes, but always in a few specific reactions.

S-matrix theory comes very close to Eastern thought not only in its ultimate conclusion, but also in its general view of matter. It describes the world of subatomic particles as a dynamic network of events and emphasizes change and transformation rather than fundamental structures or entities. In the East, such an emphasis is particularly strong in Buddhist thought where all things are seen as dynamic, impermanent and illusory.

Both the modern physicist and the Eastern mystic realized that all phenomena in this world of change transformation are dynamically interrelated. Hindus and Buddhists see this interrelation as a cosmic law, the law of karma, but they are generally not concerned with any specific patterns in the universal network of events. Chinese philosophy, on the other hand, which also emphasizes movement and change, has developed the notion of dynamic patterns which are continually formed and dissolved again in the cosmic flow of the Tao. In the I Ching, or Book of Changes, these patterns have been elaborated into a system of archetypal symbols, the so-called hexagrams.

Because of its notion of dynamic patterns, generated by change and transformation, the I Ching is perhaps the closest analogy to S-matrix theory in Eastern thought. In both systems, the emphasis is on processes rather than objects. In S-matrix theory, these processes are the particle reactions that give rise to all the phenomena in the world of hadrons.

It is evident that the complete ‘bootstrap’ view of nature, in which all phenomena in the universe are uniquely determined by mutual self-consistency, comes very close to the Eastern world view. An indivisible universe, in which all things and events are interrelated, would hardly make sense unless it was self-consistent. In a way, the requirement of self-consistency, which forms the basis of the bootstrap hypothesis, and the unity and interrelation of all phenomena, which are so strongly emphasized in Eastern mysticism, are just different aspects of the same idea. This close connection is most clearly expressed in Taoism. For the Taoist sages, all phenomena in the world were part of the cosmic Way-the Tao-and the laws followed by the Tao were not laid down by any divine lawgiver, but were inherent in its nature. Thus we read in the Tao Te Ching :
Man follows the laws of earth;
Earth follows the laws of heaven;
Heaven follows the laws of Tao;
Tao follows the laws of its intrinsic nature.

In the Eastern view then, as in the view of modern physics, everything in the universe is connected to everything else and no part of it is fundamental. The properties of any part are determined, not by some fundamental law, but by the properties of all the other parts. Both physicists and mystics realize the resulting impossibility of fully explaining any phenomenon, but then they take different attitudes. Physicists, as discussed before, are satisfied with an approximate understanding of nature. The Eastern mystics, on the other hand, are not interested in approximate or ‘relative’ knowledge. They are concerned with ‘absolute’ knowledge involving an understanding of the totality of Life. Being well aware of the essential interrelationship of the universe, they realize that to explain something means, ultimately, to show how it is connected to everything else. As this is impossible, the Eastern mystics insist that no single phenomenon can be explained.

The Eastern sages, therefore, are generally not interested in explaining things, but rather in obtaining a direct non-intellectual experience of the unity of all things. This was the attitude of the Buddha who answered all questions about life’s meaning, the origin of the world, or the nature of nirvana, with a ‘noble silence’. The nonsensical answers of Zen masters, when asked to explain something, seem to have the same purpose; to make the student realize that everything is a consequence of all the rest; that ‘explaining’ nature just means to show its unity; that, ultimately, there is nothing to explain. When a monk asked Tozan鉴真高僧, who was weighing some flax, What is Buddha? Tozan said, This flax weighs three pounds’.

Epilogue

The mechanistic world view of classical physics is useful for the description of the kind of physical phenomena we encounter in our everyday life and thus appropriate for dealing with our daily environment, and it has also proved extremely successful as a basis for technology. It is inadequate, however, for the description of physical phenomena in the submicroscopic realm. Opposed to the mechanistic conception of the world is the view of the mystics which may be epitomized by the word ‘organic’, as it regards all phenomena in the universe as integral parts of an inseparable harmonious whole.

The parallels between the views of physicists and mystics become even more plausible when we recall the other similarities which exist in spite of their different approaches. To begin with, their method is thoroughly empirical. Physicists derive their knowledge from experiments; mystics from meditative insights. Both are observations, and in both fields these observations are acknowledged as the only source of knowledge.

The modern physicist experiences the world through an extreme specialization of the rational mind; the mystic through an extreme specialization of the intuitive mind. The two approaches are entirely different and involve far more than a certain view of the physical world. However, they are complementary, as we have learned to say in physics. Neither is comprehended in the other, nor can either of them be reduced to the other, but both of them are necessary, supplementing one another for a fuller understanding of the world. To paraphrase an old Chinese saying, mystics understand the roots of the Tao but not its branches; scientists understand its branches but not its roots. Science does not need mysticism and mysticism does not need science; but man needs both. Mystical experience is necessary to understand the deepest nature of things, and science is essential for modern life. What we need, therefore, is not a synthesis but a dynamic interplay between mystical intuition and scientific analysis. So far, this has not been achieved in our society. At present, our attitude is too yang (to use again Chinese phraseology), too rational, male and aggressive. Scientists themselves are a typical example. Although their theories are leading to a world view which is similar to that of the mystics, it is striking how little this has affected the attitudes of most scientists. In mysticism, knowledge cannot be separated from a certain way of life which becomes its living manifestation. To acquire mystical knowledge means to undergo a transformation; one could even say that the knowledge is the transformation. Scientific knowledge, on the other hand, can often stay abstract and theoretical. Thus most of today’s physicists do not seem to realize the philosophical, cultural and spiritual implications of their theories. Many of them actively support a society which is still based on the mechanistic, fragmented world view, without seeing that science points beyond such a view, towards a oneness of the universe which includes not only our natural environment but also our fellow human beings. I believe that the world view implied by modern physics is inconsistent with our present society, which does not reflect the harmonious interrelatedness we observe in nature. To achieve such a state of dynamic balance, a radically different social and economic structure will be needed: a cultural revolution in the true sense of the word. The survival of our whole civilization may depend on whether we can bring about such a change. It will depend, ultimately, on our ability to adopt some of the yin attitudes of Eastern mysticism; to experience the wholeness of nature and the art of living with it in harmony.

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