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How to Think Better: Five Questions with Nathan Ballantyne
Nathan Ballantyne is a philosopher at Fordham University in New York City who focuses on questions about improving human judgment and inquiry. His 2019 book Knowing Our Limits offers a multidisciplinary approach for thinking about controversial topics. In 2018 he received an Academic Cross-Training fellowship from the John Templeton Foundation to build interdisciplinary experience in social psychology and cognitive science. Ballantyne spoke recently with Nate Barksdale, lead writer for the John Templeton Foundation’s “Possibilities” newsletter, about his epistemological journey and his recent work. How did you get interested in your field? As an undergraduate student, I commuted from my parents’…
Writers and Intellectuals Under Threat: Documenting Limits on Free Expression
Communication has never been easier or more universally distributed. There are more than five billion active mobile phones worldwide—the majority of them smartphones. People have unprecedented access to information and the ability to share it, potentially reaching vast audiences with a single viral post on WhatsApp or WeChat. But the same computing technologies that enable those links have also enabled new tools to shape the messages we see and send — or cut them off entirely. The simple promise of the internet as a tool of free expression has darkened as private companies and governments have gained the power to…
Creating jobs and alleviating poverty through business support in Indonesia
Helping entrepreneurs grow their enterprises as part of a flourishing business community As Southeast Asia’s largest economy and the world’s fourth-most-populous country, Indonesia has an impressive record of growth. Between 1999 and 2018 the country cut its poverty rate by more than half, to just under ten percent. A key contributor of that growth has been the country’s small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) — which account for nearly 97 percent of Indonesia’s domestic employment and 56 percent of its total business investment. Despite this, there have been relatively few resources to help Indonesian entrepreneurs think about how to sustainably grow…
The Long Tale of ‘Brother John’
A monk, an umbrella, an essay — and many changed lives When he sent in his submission for the John Templeton Foundation’s 2004 essay contest, August Turak had already been a successful entrepreneur and CEO, a mid-1970s student of Zen Buddhism, a mentor to college students, and a failed amateur skydiver (one attempt, ankle shattered). What he was not, in any sense of the term, was a published writer. A betting person might have given him rather long odds to win the $100,000 prize for the best essay on the “power of purpose” — the contest was open to professional…
Q&A: Five Questions with Jason Marsh
Jason Marsh is the executive director of the Greater Good Science Center (GGSC) at the University of California, Berkeley, and the founding editor-in-chief of the center’s award-winning online magazine, Greater Good. The GGSC sponsors research into social and emotional well-being and provides resources to help people apply this research to their personal and professional lives. Marsh was recently featured in TIME magazine’s “Apart. Not Alone” series responding to the COVID-19 crisis in a list of “27 People Bridging Divides Across America.” The GGSC has published an online Guide to Well-Being during Coronavirus, including advice about approaches for practicing character virtues…
JTF Symposium: Does Religion Contribute to Human Flourishing?
CAMBRIDGE, Ma. – At a time of spiritual dynamism, as religions surge in the global south and traditional faith affiliations decline in the west, the John Templeton Foundation brought together scholars for a three-day symposium at Harvard to discuss a question of growing academic interest: Does religion contribute to human flourishing? And if so, how can such flourishing be measured among individuals, groups, and social and cultural institutions? The event, organized by the Foundation's Humble Approach Initiative in collaboration with Harvard's Program on Integrative Knowledge and Human Flourishing, featured presentations on the topic by over a dozen academics from institutions around the…
COVID-19 Fund to Retain Clinical Scientists
Rabbi Sacks Interviews JTF President on BBC4
What does morality mean in the 21st century? In a new podcast series for BBC4, 2016 Templeton Prize laureate Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks explores this question with some of the world’s leading thinkers as well as British high school students, offering a diverse set of perspectives on what morality means today. The series features one three-minute introductory episode and five 45-minute episodes, with topics ranging from artificial intelligence and collective belonging to responsibility and selfies. In the most recent episode titled “Moral Heroes,” Rabbi Sacks considers who young people currently see as their moral role models. In the past, religion…
New Assessments and Measures of Virtues
Introduction Both scientific research on character development and the design of interventions intended to promote it require measures of, or techniques for assessing, virtues in individuals. In the research domain, cumulative progress in understanding virtues and their development depends on the existence of measures that are construct-valid and widely-adopted. Similarly, the creation of evidence-based virtue education efforts requires good evidence in the form of measures or assessments that not only meet scientific standards of validity and reliability, but also are usable by non-specialists and provide results that can be related to the “real world.” Very few such measures exist today,…
Sir John
As a pioneer in both financial investment and philanthropy, the late Sir John Templeton spent a lifetime encouraging open-mindedness. If he had not sought new paths, he once said, "I would have been unable to attain so many goals." The motto that Sir John created for his Foundation, "How little we know, how eager to learn," exemplified his philosophy both in the financial markets and in his groundbreaking methods of philanthropy. John Marks Templeton was born on November 29, 1912, in the small town of Winchester, Tennessee. He followed in his brother's footsteps and attended Yale University, supporting himself during the…
