Its been a long path for Oregon State University biology professor Dee Denver, working to identify the common ground between science and Buddhism and a Monday presentation on the topic is just another step on the journey.

Denver, an associate professor in OSUs Department of Integrative Biology, is the featured speaker at the October edition of Corvallis Science Pub, scheduled for 6 p.m. Monday at the Old World Deli in downtown Corvallis. The event is free.

Heres a bit of a spoiler alert: Denver, whos been studying the topic for more than 10 years now, believes that there are many unexpected points of harmony between science and Buddhism and he plans during his talk Monday to test key Buddhist tenets by subjecting them to the scientific method.

Denver is looking forward to Mondays talk as a chance to share his research to a broader audience of people with a scientific bent. And it should help him as he gears up for the next leg of the journey: Hes under contract with the Harvard University Press for a book on the topic. A first draft is finished, and Denver said hes working on rewrites.

In a recent interview with Mid-Valley Health, Denver talked about how he started exploring the links between science and Buddhism, and previewed just a bit of his Science Pub presentation.

It started at another intersection of faith and science.

Denver was working as a graduate student at an evolutionary biology lab at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, at a time when the region was embroiled in a controversy over whether science textbooks should carry disclaimers about evolution.

His laboratory, Denver recalled, inevitably was drawn into the debate.

And Denver was very much shaped by an anti-religion view that is common among evolutionary biologists. That attitude, he said, just gets projected onto everything else thats not science. You assume that everything else just has to be baloney.

Flash forward a few years, as Denver tackled postdoctoral work at Indiana University. As it turned out, the head of the universitys Buddhism studies program was the brother of the Dalai Lama and invited his famous brother to Bloomington to help dedicate an interfaith temple.

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Corvallis Science Pub speaker Dee Denver explores connections between spirituality and science