Augustine Pamplany

Institute of Philosophy and Religion
Little Flower Seminary

Project title:

A Religious and Philosophical Hermeneutic of the Indian Scientific Tradition.

Abstract:

While the science-religion enterprise in the West is very much dominated by the inter-placement of the natural sciences and the Christian theology, the Eastern scientific and religious traditions are yet to establish themselves in this emerging interdisciplinary field. The dual significance of the Indian scientific traditions on the world of the science-religion dialogue can be identified as both epistemological and ontological. The very cultural, existential and religious sitz im Leben of the birth of the Indian sciences as evidenced by historical research can very well add an “affective” and emotive dimension to the Western interdisciplinary attempts dominated by the cognitive and rationalistic approaches. As ontology and epistemology are analogically correlated and so intrinsically proximate in the Indian tradition, the methodology, scope, philosophy, practice and praxis of the Indian sciences are permeated by a substantively holistic and integral vision of reality.

Short biography:

Dr Augustine Pamplany is the Dean of Philosophy and Vice Rector at Little Flower Seminary Institute of Philosophy and Religion and the Director of the Institute of Science and Religion at Little Flower Seminary. He is the recipient of the second prize award from John Templeton Foundation in an International Students’ Essay Competition Conducted by the Foundation in 1997 on the topic : “Can Scientific Research Enhance Theology?”. He is also the recipient of the Science and Religion Course award of the Templeton Sponsored Centre For Theology and Natural Sciences at Berkeley University of California.