Templeton Religion Trust
Additional Areas
of Focus
What is the value of art? Pleasure, beauty, expression, emotional stimulation—various theories on the value of art have been proposed over the years, but, as philosopher Gordon Graham writes, “none of them on its own explain the special value of great art” Instead, Graham proposes that the value of art lies in its ability to serve as a source of knowledge and understanding—a concept better known as aesthetic cognitivism.
Just as one might learn from reading a book, listening to a teacher, or conducting a test, aesthetic cognitivism argues that one can learn from the experience of art itself. Whether you’re looking at a painting, listening to music, or watching a play, art imparts knowledge and understanding in ways researchers are still discovering. As Nelson Goodman put it in Ways of Worldmaking (1978), “the arts must be taken no less seriously than the sciences as modes of discovery, creation, and enlargement of knowledge in the broad sense of advancement of the understanding.”
Launched in 2019, Art Seeking Understanding is Templeton Religion Trust’s grant-making strategy that begins with aesthetic cognitivism. Instead of relying on art solely as a means for pleasure or emotional catharsis, the Art Seeking Understanding initiative aims to explore its value as a source of understanding. We’re conceiving, designing, and conducting empirical and statistical studies of the cognitive significance of the arts as it relates to spiritual realities and discoveries of new spiritual information.
How and why do people think about science and religion the way they do? Multiple factors influence how people react to the findings of science and the teachings of religions, especially when those domains intersect. Arguments and evidence certainly have a role to play. Still, a range of other influences accounts for the wide spectrum of opinion about the relationship between science and religion. Some people are persuaded by the same arguments and evidence while others are not. Underlying psychological, social, cultural, and other contextual factors shape the different ways people approach the relationship between science and religion across settings and on various issues.
Launched in 2016, Science and Religion in Context aims to produce new data and insights about how people’s ideas concerning the relationship between religions and scientific disciplines are formed, maintained, transmitted, and how they change.
