A scientific error of the Buddha?
Upvote:0
Buddha probably based the first three examples of birth from how people understood the origins of life of his time. You are right that he was neither a scientist or a biologist in our contemporary understanding, and i doubt he was looking to outline a biological taxonomy of all life.
Instead - to my understanding - he used these four examples of birth to arrive at the point that "spontaneous generation" of birth is the subject of his teaching.
The word "spontaneous" is translated from the pali word opapatika. Looking closer at the meaning, we see that it also means "being reborn without parents":
https://suttacentral.net/define/opap%C4%81tika
To me, this implies a reference to the form rebirth known as jati:
https://suttacentral.net/define/j%C4%81ti
In other words, buddha is referencing rebirth as described further in the topic of dependent origination.
Upvote:0
"If it is a scientific error of the Buddha, then how can we understand his omniscience? Couldn't he see with his supernatural eye that maggots weren't really born from the decomposition of bodies?"
Actually from this you can now understand Buddha's omniscience completely and conclude he was not omniscient.
Upvote:5
I could not find any commentaries with a detailed explanation on this.
I'll use the Bodhi translation of MN 12:
What is egg-born generation? There are these beings born by breaking out of the shell of an egg; this is called egg-born generation. What is womb-born generation? There are these beings born by breaking out from the caul; this is called womb-born generation. What is moisture-born generation? There are these beings born in a rotten fish, in a rotten corpse, in rotten porridge, in a cesspit, or in a sewer; this is called moisture-born generation. What is spontaneous generation? There are gods and denizens of hell and certain human beings and some beings in the lower worlds; this is called spontaneous generation. These are the four kinds of generation.
Maggots are egg-born.
For moisture-born, we could apply this to bacteria and maybe fungi.
Bacteria involved in decomposition of the human body after death, usually come from the gut microbiome and other places in or on the body where there is bacteria. The other cases of rotten porridge, cesspit, sewer and rotten fish appear to imply the reproduction of bacteria too.
Bacteria are certainly not egg-born, womb-born or spontaneously generated. So, they can only fall in the category of moisture-born. Moisture-born here simply means that these beings reproduce only when the conditions are favourable for reproduction.
Mold in bread are caused by spores of fungi. They require moisture to reproduce. I don't consider fungal spores to be a kind of egg. But I suppose it could be interpreted as moisture-born (i.e. when the conditions are favourable) or egg-born (i.e. from fungal spores).
Spontaneous generation seem to apply to beings like devas (gods) and those in hell.
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