Ancient perspectives on the universe

THE latest exhibition at the ArtScience Museum is a portal to the universe - through the filters of science, religion and art. Humans have been interested in heaven and earth from time immemorial and sought to grasp it as well as they could.

Take the third or fourth century relic stupa from India for example, with its spire on top symbolising the central pillar of the cosmos connecting heaven and earth.

Then there's the Jain Mandala which shows higher realms of existence in Jain cosmology and how the culture already envisioned a multiverse. Juxtapose this and the Chinese, Korean and Japanese star charts from the 13th …