RELG 382 - Buddhism and Science

Credits: (3)
College Curriculum: COLL 200
Domain (Anchored): ALV
Domain (Reaching Out): NQR

This course will examine modern Buddhists’ claims on cosmology, the individual, and the nature of consciousness, investigating the strategies Buddhists utilize to construct and negotiate the boundaries between Religion and Science. We will draw material from across the Asian Buddhist world, analyzing debates between Śri Lankan monks and Christian missionaries on the structure of the universe, Tibetan and western efforts to demonstrate the compatibility between the Buddhist doctrine of emptiness and quantum physics, and the contemporary attempt to map Buddhist meditators’ brains. The course assumes no prior knowledge of Buddhism; we will study classical Buddhist perspectives at every turn.