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Gathering thinkers from ten countries and from a variety of scientific and spiritual backgrounds, Global Perspectives on Science and Spirituality leads readers on a fascinating tour of distinctly nonwestern approaches to topics in these two fields. These voices add fresh and invigorating input to a dialogue which has thus far been predominantly guided by scholars from the United States or Western Europe. The award-winning researchers represented in this volume were selected from a pool of over one hundred and fifty applications, and they offer the very best scholarship from under-represented regions around the globe. The essays cover a wide spectrum of scientific fields, spanning mathematical physics, robotics, biosemiotics and other new schools of theoretical biology, embryonic stem cells, cognitive science, and the concept of opening the human mind to broader ideas of reality. Hailing from some of the top research institutions in India, Japan, Russia, Korea, China, and a variety of Eastern European nations, contributors offer unique insights into the spiritual and philosophical traditions of their cultures. At the same time, they also deftly engage concepts from the ongoing Western dialogue in its own terms, delving deeply, at times, into schools of thought like phenomenology or process thought. Scholars, students, researchers, and anyone seeking new ways of understanding the interplay of spirituality and science will discover in these truly interdisciplinary essays a multitude of windows into previously under-explored areas of research. Indeed, any one of these pieces could serve as the basis for entirely new programs of long-term study. Pranab Das is chair and professor of physics at Elon University. Having focused his scientific research on chaos theory and nonlinear dynamics, he is presently involved in the rich interdisciplinary dialogues that arise from the intersections of science and society. He is executive editor of the International Society for Science and Religion’s Library Project and the leader of the Global Perspectives on Science and Spirituality program. During the past several years he has worked closely with scholars from around the world to bring their insights to a Western audience and to foster excellent research through their unique approaches to some of the key questions of our times. ...
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