Templeton Report: 2009

“We want to find out what makes these kids tick, in the sense of moral formation, character, values, and how they see themselves in the community.” So said James Arthur, professor of education and civic engagement at the University of Birmingham in England.

“The Indian economy is at a crossroads,” says Jagdish Bhagwati, a leading authority on free trade and globalization and a prestigious University Professor at Columbia University in New York. “India is moving from the completion of conventional economic reforms, such as removing industrial licensing requirements,” to what he calls “second-generation reforms” in areas like health care and education.

“It is important that ministers of religion should not fear science but be able to welcome its insights,” said the theologian and particle physicist John Polkinghorne of the University of Cambridge, praising the launch earlier this year of the Science for Ministry Initiative. "They need the intellectual confidence to argue for the compatibility of science and religion, whose understandings, rightly understood, complement each other rather than standing in conflict.”

Students in China may have a reputation for excelling in mathematics, but Professor Shing-Tung Yau of Harvard University worries that young people in his home country are falling behind. “There are many bright and hardworking students in China,” he told the Templeton Report, “but due to government policy and the established education system, there is enormous pressure to do well in standardized examinations.

Rex Jung has been studying the interaction between creativity and intelligence for a decade, hoping to discover whether creativity is the preserve of "a few geniuses like Einstein and Mozart” or can be found, in some form, in all individuals. Now, thanks to a three-year, $600,000 grant from the John Templeton Foundation, Jung and his colleagues at the Mind Research Network (MRN) are beginning to find some answers.

“We were cursing the darkness, trying to oppose religious persecution but not doing enough to prevent it,” according to Thomas Farr, who served as the first director of the U.S. State Department’s Office of International Religious Freedom after it was established in 1998. “This was an important issue,” he told the Templeton Report, “and after four years I became convinced we weren’t doing it well.”

That is the Big Question answered by twelve distinguished scientists and writers in the Templeton Foundation’s latest essay series, which has been advertised this spring in publications across the U.S. and the UK.

The announcement in Paris on March 16 that this year’s Templeton Prize would be awarded to Bernard d’Espagnat, professor emeritus of theoretical physics at the University of Paris-Sud, generated news coverage and commentary around the world. As the BBC reported, “Professor d’Espagnat’s scientific pedigree put him at the centre of the growth of quantum mechanics, working with Nobel laureates in the field including Enrico Fermi and Niels Bohr.

“Courage is a foundational virtue. If you don’t have courage, none of the other virtues can be protected.” So says Charlotte Hays, editor of In Character, in explaining why the new “courage issue” of the Templeton Foundation’s tri-annual journal of the “everyday virtues” is so important. “You might believe all the right things,” she continues, “but not have the courage to defend them.”

On November 27, 1878, Charles Darwin wrote a letter to John Brodie Innes, his friend and local vicar: “There is no reason why the disciples of [religion and science] should attack each other with bitterness, though each upholding strictly their beliefs.” Given how tense the dialogue between religion and science has become at times during the 150 years since the publication of On the Origin of Species, it is worth noting that history’s preeminent biological thinker repeatedly called for moderation on all sides.

In our youth-centered culture, Marc Freedman points out, social innovation is often considered the exclusive province of idealistic strivers in the early years of their work lives. Freedman, founder and CEO of the San Francisco-based group Civic Ventures, thinks it is time to change our notion of who can be a social entrepreneur.