Southeast professor teaches logic, philosophy of science to monks in India

When many people think of Buddhist monks, they may picture bald, Asian men in long, drab robes who spend their days meditating in monasteries in a far off land, isolated from modern conveniences.

Hamner Hill

But in addition to that stereotypical image, Buddhist monks also have a desire to learn and understand Western culture and philosophy, according to Hamner Hill, interim dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Southeast Missouri State University.

Hill last month traveled to Mungod, India, to teach courses on logic and the philosophy of science to Tibetan Buddhist monks at the Drepung Loseling Buddhist Monastery, according to a news release from the University Communications office at Southeast.

He was there as a part of the Emory-Tibet Science Initiative (ETSI), which was created with the support of the Dalai Lama to bring Tibetan Buddhism into the 21st century by teaching them about Western science and philosophy.

In other words, “they’re trying to do in 20 years what it took the Catholic Church close to a thousand years to do, which is to reconcile science and religion,” Hill told the Southeast Missourian.

Tibetan Buddhist monks attend a class on logic and the philosophy of science taught by Hamner Hill last month at the Drepung Loseling Buddhist Monastery in Mungod, India.Submitted

Since it began in 2006, ETSI has worked with Tibetan Buddhist monastic universities to develop a comprehensive curriculum spanning various scientific disciplines including physics, biology and neuroscience. After eight years of planning, the first on-site courses began in 2014 at three locations in southern India, including Drepung.

“They (the monks) don’t know a whole lot about Western science and that’s the whole point of the project, teaching them about our approach to critical thinking and logic,” Hill said.

He said he “lucked into” the opportunity to be part of the project’s faculty when a professor from another university who normally teaches the courses was unable to participate this year.

One of the ETSI program organizers, University of Nebraska philosophy professor David Henderson, knew Hill from graduate school and asked him to be part of the project faculty.

The focus of Hill’s lectures to about 120 monks in his class was about how science and philosophy can coexist. According to Hill, the program was designed to “expand their thinking about Western physics and neuroscience.

Hill said he faced a language barrier he had to overcome.

“Teaching logic with a translator to a class of 120 students and slides written in Tibetan, which I can’t read, is a challenge, but one that I loved,” he said in a news release from Southeast.

Despite the language barrier, Hill said his students were very engaged and often debated him on various philosophical and logical points.

“The style of debate reminded me of a combination between rabbinic tradition and Socrates,” he said. “It was question and answer, give and take. They would get really passionate about it, but then they’d say, ‘Yeah, I think that’s the right answer’ and they’d agree to agree.”

Hill said his students learned to apply logic to scientific principles and religious philosophies.

“They asked good questions about different ways of looking at the world and how to adjudicate between competing theories,” he said. “That’s where the logic comes in.”

Asked what he enjoyed most about the experience, Hill quickly answered “just being able to spend a week with people who dedicate their lives to compassion and to have 120 students in a room with all of them paying attention at once,” and then joked, “I haven’t had 120 students pay attention in the last five years!”