The Spiritual Experience as Scientific Experiment: How Science Can Meet Religion

1. Entity type Lemma
2. Original titleThe Spiritual Experience as Scientific Experiment: How Science Can Meet Religion
3. Language term English
4. lemma author Tampakis, Kostas
5. lemma category Modes of interaction - Modern physics :QM - History and philosophy of science - Mysticism and Orthodox spiritual experience
6. Publication date 2013
7. lemma work Chiţoiu, Dan Mihai [Author]. The Spiritual Experience as Scientific Experiment: How Science Can Meet Religion
8. lemma manifestations Philosophy Study
9. Keywords Neopatristic movement - Reality - Experiment - Orthodox spirituality
10. Url Click Here
11. Lemma body

    1. This paper is the second to emerge under the aegis of the Knowledge Based Society Project, alongside the 2012 “To aim reality” study. It aims to discuss the similarities between the mystic’s experience and the scientific experiment, as they are both ways to approach a deeper understanding of Reality. However, raising the problem of the relation between religion and science requires a clarification of the terms “religion” and “science” themselves. The paper points out that the terms are too vague, and that the differences among religions are so vast that it is almost impossible to use the term religion without an abstract meaning. Even within Christianity, Eastern and Western Christianity have different overall perspectives on issues that determine the relationship with science. Moreover, the history of the religious doctrines after the Enlightenment is a significant factor in itself. The article underlines that most religious doctrines underwent secular influences, especially ideological ones, that in some cases left tracks on their discourse. Thus, trying to establish a generic rapprochement between religion and science is difficult. The author proposes that it would be preferable to identify types of religious experience and of religious horizons which could be especially open to science. The same holds true for science: for a dialogue to emerge, there is a need to identify those aspects of science that are not contaminated by ideology or by assumptions alien to its experimental nature. The paper has four parts. The first discusses the historical, philosophical and ideological background of a possible dialogue between science and religion. The second describes how both science and spirituality can provide rigor to our description of reality, while the third discusses the similarities between spiritual experiences by mystics and otherwise and scientific experiments. Finally, the fourth part discusses the problem modern physics encounters when looking for a language to describe specific levels of reality.