Perspectives: Art, Science and Spirituality

Lee Honors College, Western Michigan University
Dr. Lynn Underwood, Adjunct Professor

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About the course

To get a fix on who we are and what we want to do, next and in the long term, we use information gathered through analytical and scientific explorations as well as direct experience and emotional reactions. These experiences and responses can be enhanced using input from music, visual art, and contemplation of the natural world. Thus the sciences and the arts provide complementary methods for exploration as well as the resources for our reflections. This course is designed to increase our capacities to be awake and aware, to enhance our understanding of ourselves and our actions. The activities will enable us to define aspects of spirituality and find practical ways to nourish our own spirituality. One focal point of the course will be an examination of altruism and compassionate love, giving of self for the good of another. A second focal point will be how we view time and our experience of different kinds of time. In both cases we want to see how sciences and arts shape our understanding of what is real and of how to act well. Contemplative exercises will be used to increase our capacity for direct experience.

Resources from the arts will include poetry, music (selected by students), film, a novel, and visual arts. Ungraded journals will deepen our responses. A project in an artistic medium of your choosing and small arts assignments (graded by effort, intent and exploration rather than artistic talent) will allow us to express ourselves through the arts, as a way of enhancing our capacity to see what is real and to express what is most real in ourselves. Resources from the sciences will include articles and summaries of data in the social sciences (provided in a coursepack) along with a small social science research project on spirituality and altruism. These will illustrate how scientific exploration can complement direct experience and enhance our capacity to see clearly. Grades will be based on the projects, the smaller assignments, class participation, and a final exam in essay format covering the integrative themes in the course.

About Dr. Underwood

Dr. Underwood received her Ph.D. in Epidemiology from Queens University School of Medicine in the United Kingdom following medical studies at the University of Iowa School of Medicine. She spent ten years in cancer epidemiology, doing work in pathogenesis, prevention, and early detection. Subsequent work in the field of study design led to teaching clinical trials at Case Western Medical School in the Department of Epidemiology.

In addition to journal publications and chapter contributions, she has co-edited two methodology textbooks, Measuring Stress and Social Support Measurement and Intervention, both published by Oxford University Press. She has led the development and co-sponsorship of various research agenda development workshops with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) including one on the bio-behavioral aspects of pain with 10 NIH Institutes, one on spirituality and aging with the National Institute on Aging, and two on End of Life issues. She developed a Joint Request for Applications for research funding with the National Institute on Alcoholism. She has developed and led research funding initiatives, which include a cross cultural study of quality of life with the World Health Organization, and a recent initiative on Scientific Research on Altruistic and Compassionate Love, which has funded 25 projects in this area to date. She has recently co-edited and contributed chapters to the text: Altruism and Altruistic Love, Science Religion and Philosophy in Dialog, and has contributed to the Macmillan Encyclopedia of Bioethics.

Current personal research interests include research on various aspects of spirituality, and the interface of art, science and spirituality. She have served on a number of advisory boards, including that of the National Center for Medical Rehabilitation Research within the NIH, and that of private foundations. Formerly vice president for research for a private foundation, she is currently president of a research organization, involved in doing consulting work for private foundations and federal agencies on collaborative and interdisciplinary initiatives, and is continuing to teach and write.