Summary: The aim of the project is to identify the various relationships between religion and science that are explicitly or implicitly present in the way Chinese Daoist monks and nuns describe and interpret their mystical experiences. With a mixed-methods design, the project will answer the following questions:

• What are the themes suggestive of a Daoist way of conceptualizing the relationship between religion and science
• How do religious and scientific worldviews engage and interact with each other in the meaning-making of Daoist mystical experiences

The project is needed and contributes to social scientific study of religion in the following aspects:

First, it examines the relationships between religion and science in a nonAbrahamic context, among Chinese Daoist monks and nuns.

Second, it focuses on the context of mystical experiences, which represent unique stakes and difficulties (e.g., anomalous somatic and psychological experiences that are yet quintessential in accomplishing Daoist goals of nourishing life), which require practitioners to engage their explanatory frameworks. Our aim is to examine the various ways in which relationships between religion and science are described in this context.

Third, it contributes data from individuals’ lived experiences in Daoism, a religious tradition that has been understudied in social science.

The project enhances INSBS’s mission by studying the various relationships between religious and scientific worldviews that are important considerations in the scientific study of religion. Nuanced understandings of how religion and science relate may also help in our understanding of the lived Daoist mystical experiences. By conducting this project with Chinese scholars, we also grow international research collaborations and build capacity for local research enterprise.

Project activities will include semi-structured interviews with N = 50 Chinese Daoist monks and nuns, open and axial coding of the interview transcripts, qualitative analysis of the data using grounded theory, and quantitative analysis of the data using network analysis.

Outputs will be a qualitative dataset indicating relationship between religion and science in Daoism, a coding manual that can be used for future mixed-methods research, two scholarly publications, and three conference presentations.

The anticipated impact of this project includes:

• An extended understanding in the various relationships between religious and scientific worldviews in the context of describing and interpreting Daoist mystical experiences
• A contribution to the knowledge of contents and structure of Daoist mystical experiences
• Building an inter-disciplinary and multi-national research team that examines the relationship of science and religion in Daoism