Since science is heavily dependent on empirical observation for data, the Cartesian sensitivity to epistemological questions has dramatically enhanced the sophistication of human perception.
Buddhism is the only genuinely positive religion to be encountered in history, and this applies even to its epistemology (which is a strict phenomenalism).
But I think the discussion becomes much more interesting when we take into account the epistemological question about the extent to which we can really know and understand consciousness, and the subsequent questions of methodology.