John Teasdale Archives - International Society for Science & Religion (ISSR)

September 2026 Blog

September 2026 Blog

The Science and Theology of Chanting Fraser Watts Scientific research on spiritual practices is very unevenly distributed. So far there has been most research on yoga and mindfulness, but relatively little on many other spiritual practices. Correcting that was the motivation behind the series of grants given by TWCF for research on the Science of Religious and Spiritual Exercises (SORSE). ISSR received one of those grants, with a particular focus on comparing practices that use human psychological resources in different ways. ISSR has also helped with the administration of another SORSE grant to Miguel Farías, From the Heart: Testing the Efficacy of Heart-Centered Contemplation. Chanting is a widely used spiritual practice, found in almost every faith tradition (e.g. Sheldrake, 2017, chapter 6). Until recently there was

By Fraser Watts|2026-09-14T21:48:17+01:00September 14th, 2026|Categories: Blog|Tags: academic religion, academic science and religion, academic spirituality, academic theology, acoustic neuroscience, acoustics and spirituality, altered states and chanting, ancient chant, ancient Christian chant, ancient Christian music, ancient liturgy, attention and music, attention and religion, attention and spirituality, attention stability, auditory attention, auditory cognition, auditory neuroscience, biomarkers and chanting, biomarkers and spirituality, Buddhist chanting, Buddhist studies chanting, calming music research, cathedral acoustics, chant acoustics, chant and contemplation, chant and eternity, chant and liturgy, chant and religious experience, chant and spiritual experience, chant and transcendence, chant revival, chant rhythm, chant studies, chant therapy, chant traditions, chanting, chanting across religions, chanting and affect, chanting and attention, chanting and autonomic nervous 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October 2022 Blog

October 2022 Blog

Understanding Spiritual Intelligence: A Progress Report on an ISSR Research Project Fraser Watts We are just over two years into the ISSR research project on Understanding Spiritual Intelligence, funded by TWCF. I posted a blog at the start about what we intended to do. This is an update on where we have got to. We had to do quite a bit of hard conceptual work on what we mean by “spiritual intelligence”. We do not assume that there is a “God spot” in the brain, or a module for spiritual intelligence in the cognitive architecture. We assume that when humans are operating in spiritual mode, that they are using the same mental resources as they use for everything else. We also do not assume that spiritual intelligence is

By Fraser Watts|2022-10-16T20:01:31+01:00October 16th, 2022|Categories: Blog|Tags: Cambridge, grant, Harris Wiseman, Iain McGilchrist, imago dei, intelligence, John Teasdale, Marius Dorobantu, mindfulness, research, Rowan Williams, spiritual, Templeton, theology, update, William Clocksin, Wizard of Oz, Yorick Wilks, Zygon|