Religious Studies: Cosmology, Anthropology and Science [SSPSB102]

Learning outcomes

The Learning outcomes.

Access to this course assumes the integration of the basic concepts and vocabulary of contemporary philosophy as well as those of the history of science.

It is equally important to abandon prejudices and resentments towards the great systems of representation of the world that are the cosmologies through which human beings inhabit the world and project themselves into existence.

Finally, as the cultural heritage of humanity, cosmologies are a reserve of concepts, figures and archetypes that can always be mobilized for artistic, scientific and spiritual creativity.

Objectives

Objectives

The course is an invitation to discover the human species as an explorer. In his quest for the unknown, the human being is both a narrative in the process of writing and a being that mediates, in the words of Paul Ricoeur and other philosophers. This approach to human nature becomes a natural gateway to understanding the nature and role of cosmologies that are systems of mediation and that have accompanied humanity at least since the Upper Paleolithic to the present day. We will show that these cosmologies, which are called shamanism, civic religion, Mazdeism, monotheism, the philosophical path, Buddhism, neo-Confucianism, secularism, etc., speak inter alia of the rise in complexity of human representations. Since these cosmologies allow access to the reality of the world by organizing it metaphysically, it will be shown that the quest that runs through the scientist and the quest for transcendence pursue the same horizon of meaning.

Content

Contents

The proposed course aims to show the rise in complexity of representations of reality through institutions and gestures relating to the question of meaning and the orientation of action, and this from the Upper Paleolithic to the present day, passing through the break that the axial turn operates. We will highlight the link between the emergence of cosmologies that are theories of global reality and the evolution of mental fluidity. Finally, we will approach the relationship between cosmologies by confronting their respective narratives.

The preceding data will allow us to draw lessons on the human being, on what the cosmological framework allows him to do according to his power.

Finally, we will see the aspect of cosmologies as cultural reservoirs. Thus, we will analyze how concepts such as the notion of sunyata in Nagarjuna, the Li/Qi couple of Zhu Xi and Huang Yang Ming of neo-Confucianism, the notion of mediation (fudosei) of Watsuji, etc. can be alternative ways of approaching reality in theoretical physics, biology, or ecology. More generally, we will see to what extent cosmologies could inspire a great science that would include qualia, or a great phenomenology that would include quanta.