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Ideas that inspire a life well-lived
Do we inhabit a multiverse? Do we have free will? What is love? Is evolution directional?
Life’s biggest questions rarely have simple answers. That is precisely why they continue to occupy the world’s most thoughtful minds. The Well is a place to engage those questions, drawing on insights from science, philosophy, and the humanities.
Created by the John Templeton Foundation in partnership with Big Think, The Well brings together ideas that inspire deeper understanding and a more considered approach to living.
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The Templeton Foundation supports interdisciplinary research and catalyzes conversations that inspire awe and wonder.
Why Einstein called awe the fundamental emotion
If you’ve gotten goosebumps when hearing a story about a stranger’s selfless heroism, or you’ve felt your chest swell at a concert, when the audience’s voice and the musician’s instruments align, you have felt awe. And, according to professor Dacher Keltner, who has spent his life studying it, it’s one of humankind’s most unifying traits:
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Philosophers have been making the claim that free will is an illusion for hundreds of years. Dr. Uri Maoz shares what modern neuroscience has to say about it.
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According to Zena Hitz, the idea of the intellectual has become distorted. She believes “the real thing is something more extraordinary but also more available to us.”
John Templeton Foundation
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James Gleick, the author of biographies of Isaac Newton and Richard Feynman, discusses what they and other geniuses have in common.
John Templeton Foundation