Abstract
While discourse on the relation between Christianity and science has a long history, it has only been in the last century that Buddhists and Buddhist scholars have begun to consider the relation between their own religious tradition and the promises and challenges of modern science. This does not mean that there has not been a long history of a relation between Buddhism and the sciences. However, rarely has that relation been conceived of in terms of “discourse on religion and science” as such. As a result, much of the recent work done in the area of science and religion, though significant in its own right, inadequately considers many core Buddhist concerns. Originally published in 1993, this version has been updated with a preface surveying developments over the last three decades.
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Acknowledgements
The essay that follows this new Preface was originally published in Bridging Science and Religion, edited by Ted Peters and Gaymon Bennett, SCM Press, 1993, and reprinted by Fortress Press, 2003, pp. 153–172. It is republished here with the permission of both presses, to whom we wish to express our gratitude.
I would also like to express my gratitude to the editors of this special issue, Thomas Calobrisi and Devin Zuckerman for this opportunity to republish this essay. In addition to making it accessible to a wider audience, this allows me to make some minor corrections. Other than some grammatical changes, however, the essay itself remains as originally published. It was written for a general audience, and therefore does not include the diacritics or the reference citations normal to an academic publication.
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Payne, R.K. Buddhism and the Sciences: Historical Background, Contemporary Developments. DHARM 3, 219–243 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42240-020-00086-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42240-020-00086-8