About

Summary

The Meaning and Mystery in Science project seeks to explore how scientists, often considered bastions of rationality, navigate the yearning for deeper connections—to self, others, nature, and the transcendent. Through rich qualitative interviews, primarily with scientists who consider themselves non-religious, we examine how scientific practice relates to scientists' quest for meaning, and the factors that help and hinder this quest. Our project thus illuminates the myriad and profound ways in which scientists grapple with meaning and spirituality in their work.

Methodologies

A team of 7 experienced interviewers conducted 104 in-depth interviews with biologists and physicists affiliated with academic institutions in India, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States, in 2023-2024.

We recruited the majority of interviewees from a pool of respondents to the Work and Well-Being in Science survey fielded in 2021. This survey was designed to be representative of biologists and physicists at PhD granting institutions in these four countries. It included a question asking respondents permission to be recontacted for a follow-up interview. It also included a question asking respondents about their religious or spiritual identification, from which we selected primarily non-religious respondents. Otherwise, we sought balance with respect to country and variation with respect to discipline, gender, and academic position. Interviews typically ran 60-90 minutes. Interviews were conducted in English, except for most interviews with Italian scientists, which were conducted in Italian.

Key Findings

Yearning for Connection: 

  • Most scientists reported a strong desire to connect more deeply with nature; some are fortunate enough to be able to do this in their work. Many noted a profound sense of awe in natural settings like deserts or mountains, identifying these as places where they feel most "spiritually" connected.

  • Many expressed a longing to better understand and connect with themselves, and some engaged in practices such as meditation and visits to religious spaces even while espousing materialism. Some expressed a sense of fear and a sense of disconnect with oneself. 

  • When it came to connection to others, we found variation in the extent to which scientists felt a meaningful sense of belonging to their disciplinary or scientific communities. Experiences of loss and relational struggles fueled yearnings for deeper interpersonal connections. 

  • While less common, some nonreligious scientists did express a desire to strengthen their connection to a higher power, framing it in terms of personal growth or spiritual development.

Contexts of spiritual yearning

Such yearnings arose both in professional and personal contexts, and were facilitated by both positive experiences (e.g., awe in the face of nature) as well as negative ones (e.g., bereavement, disillusionment with work). Some scientists claimed not to experience any sense of yearning at all, and others mentioned the inability to pursue such yearnings due to professional and institutional constraints.

Our study overall suggests that science, rather than being a source of disenchantment, can often act as a medium for what the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor calls “cosmic connection,” creating moments of enchantment and awakening a sense of spiritual yearning even among non-religious scientists. Science as a practice may offer pathways to resonance, enabling us to experience a sense of awe, mystery, and glimpses of a "deeper" or "higher" reality. Science, in other words, may be a spiritual pathway.

This project is funded by the John Templeton Foundation as part of the Spiritual Yearning Research Initiative (SYRI), Grant #62958, "Spiritual Yearning in Science" (Brandon Vaidyanathan, PI).