Featured Grant
The Neuroscience of Creativity
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With a three-year grant for $600,000, Dr. Rex Jung and his colleagues at the Mind Research Network and the University of New Mexico are conducting neuroscientific research on visual artists and other individuals who have exhibited talent in science, technology, and mathematics. Their goal is to discover the link between human creativity and discrete brain regions and modes of neuronal operation. Using a combination of neuro-imaging techniques, they hope to better understand the interplay among brain structure, cognitive function, and behavior associated with the creative process.
Results of their research were recently published in the Journal of Neuroscience. Describing this work, New Scientist wrote: "There may be more to creativity than simply letting the ideas flow. Brain measurements of a 'creativity chemical' are revealing a complex interplay between ingenuity and intelligence."
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Core Themes
In keeping with Sir John Templeton's intent, his Foundation serves as a philanthropic catalyst for research and discoveries relating to what scientists and philosophers call the Big Questions. We support work at the world's top universities in such fields as theoretical physics, cosmology, evolutionary biology, cognitive science, and social science relating to love, forgiveness, creativity, purpose, and the nature and origin of religious belief. We also seek to stimulate new thinking about wealth creation in the developing world, character education in schools and universities, and programs for cultivating the talents of gifted children. Learn more about the Foundation's "Core Themes."
Funding Areas
Click on the funding areas below for an overview and a sampling of grant profiles.
Featured Book
Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths About Science and Religion (Harvard University Press)
Since the 19th century, the dominant narrative in the history of science has been that of science triumphant and of science at war with religion. In the 1970s, however, a new generation of historians began to examine various episodes in the history of science and religion through the values and knowledge of the actors themselves. In a new volume, Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths About Science and Religion, Ronald L. Numbers has brought together the leading scholars of this new history of science. Their essays puncture a range of still-prevalent myths, from Galileo’s incarceration to Darwin’s deathbed conversion to Einstein’s belief in a personal God who “didn’t play dice with the universe.” The book is based on papers delivered at a 2007 conference supported by the Templeton Foundation.
Ronald L. Numbers is the Hilldale Professor of the History of Science and Medicine at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. A leading figure in the field, he is an authority on the history of creationism and creation science. He is currently working on a one-volume history of science in America since European settlement and co-editing (with David Lindberg) the eight-volume Cambridge History of Science.
