Religious Studies: Anthropology, Metaphysics and Science

Teaching content

The teaching is approached thematically in order to cross the different areas outlined above. The first theme aims to raise awareness of the uniqueness of modern man. Indeed, in the Eurasian space, other humanities, such as Neanderthals and Denisovans, with whom modern man has cohabited and exchanged genes, are no longer irreducible otherness. Similarly, neither the other humanities of Southeast Asia, such as Flores Man, nor those of East Africa, such as Naledi Man, have survived. 

The second theme deals with the notion of cultural evolution and covers the Upper Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic periods in the Eurasian region. This period is analyzed through artifacts such as rock art, Mesolithic burials and camps, and Neolithic sites such as Göbekli Tepe and Çatal Hüyük in present-day Anatolia, as well as funerary art from this period in the Levant.

The third theme is a taxonomy of the cosmovisions that have accompanied humanity since its beginnings, as suggested by the artifacts left by Neanderthals in the Bruniquel cave in the Tarn region of France, or the geoglyphs of the Nazca people. A method of study is indicated to analyze their respective complexity and power of mediation. The study shows that cosmovisions are cultural organisms that emerge at a particular moment in history, develop, intersect, diversify, and then either disappear or perpetuate themselves through updating.

The fourth theme deals with cosmovisions as resources for intellectual creativity in the arts and sciences. Within this framework, we analyze, among other things, the potential of Nāgārjuna's writings in logic and theoretical physics, those of Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming of the neo-Confucianist current in theoretical physics, and those of Christianity in logic and mathematics.

The fifth theme analyzes the ways in which cosmovisions intervene in the management of humanity's critical realities, suggesting perspectives, providing solutions, or innovating with respect to the resources available to date. Critical realities include, among others, the chaos that individuals and peoples inevitably introduce into the public sphere, the relationship with others as individuals and as a constituted group, cultural creativity, species consciousness, and the meaning of existence.