From Soul Science to Spiritual Information: John Templeton on Science and its Religious Potential

ABSTRACT John Templeton's philanthropic organisations provide funding for research at the frontiers of the natural and human sciences. That funding is consistent with Templeton's longstanding personal interest in science. This article examines why Templeton, a world-renowned investor, was so interested in science. Templeton's writings indicate that science mattered primarily because of its profound religious and theological potential. By promoting a variety of ideas about how science might interact with and be beneficial to religion, Templeton sought to catalyse interest in and appreciation for science's religious potential, rather than to defend a specific view about how that potential should be understood.


Introduction
Between them, John Templeton's (1912Templeton's ( -2008 philanthropic organisationsthe John Templeton Foundation, the Templeton World Charity Foundation, and the Templeton Religion Trusthave in recent decades provide significant funding for research at the frontiers of the sciences. Examples of their large-scale support for the natural sciences within the last 10 years include grants from the John Templeton Foundation to support the Black Hole Initiative at Harvard University, to develop the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis at the University of St. Andrews, to explore questions in fundamental physics at Northwestern University, and to sustain experimental and theoretical research into the origins of life at Arizona State University, to name just a few. 1 Templeton's philanthropies also provide significant funding in the human sciences. 2 To the extent that his philanthropies' funding choices reflect his personal interests, their support for scientific activities suggests that Templeton must have had considerable enthusiasm for science.
The extent of that enthusiasm quickly becomes clear when one examines Templeton's published writings. Templeton devoted substantial attention to science in four books that he authored or co-authored, each of which feature the term in their title. 3 Five chapters of one of these books first appeared in the 1980s as stand-alone articles in the Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation, the predecessor to today's Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith. 4 During the 1990s Templeton also edited a number of works in which science features prominently, and he made occasional comments about science in many of his other published works as well. 5 Together Templeton's writings evince a sustained fascination with, and commitment to, science.
This article examines why Templeton, a world-renowned investor, was so interested in science. It does so by tracing historically the main contours of his thinking about science in the writings that bear his name, starting with some brief comments that he made about science in the context of the formation of the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion in the early 1970s. 6 Although Templeton deployed a variety of concepts and relies on the ideas of a wide range of scholars in his writing about science, those writings consistently point to science's profound religious and theological potential as the main reason Templeton cared so much about it. Science's tendency to produce generally reliable knowledge about phenomena in nature, and its capacity to form the character of those who practice it so they become more humble (arguably the trait Templeton most strongly emphasises), are important. But it is science's tendency to push into domains previously inhabited by religion, and thereby to open out onto religious questions, as well as its capacitywhen intentionally partnered with religionsto revolutionise the latter, that ultimately drove Templeton's interest in it. That interest would doubtless have been enriched by Templeton's regular contact with scientists and science-and-religion scholars that his philanthropic activity made possible.

The Templeton Prize
Templeton's formal academic training was in economics at Yale University (from which he graduated in 1934), and in law at the University of Oxford (1936), and professionally he was an extraordinarily successful international investor. Such was his reputation in investing circles that in 1999, Money magazine called him "arguably the greatest global stock picker of the century." 7 Though famous for his performance in financial and investing transactions, throughout his life Templeton also maintained a strong interest in science. His frequent co-author, the scientist and former executive direction of the American Scientific Affiliation Robert Herrmann, described Templeton's early interest in science as "very practical," and deriving in part from parental encouragement. 8 Templeton's first published thoughts about science, and about its relations to religion, appeared amidst his turn to philanthropy in the early 1970s. That turn was bound up with what has been called Templeton's "spiritual renewal" in the 1960s. 9 Religion had not always been central to Templeton's life; as he told one of his biographers, "all through that twenty years [following graduation from Yale] I regarded myself as a serious Christian and a child of God. But I got an increasing feeling of being held back, an increasing feeling of a need to change my lifestyle or to change my goals. The things that were real and important, such as spiritual matters, were getting squeezed out by working so hard to become the best in my profession." 10 By the 1960s Templeton had "increasingly strong feelings" that it was time to start tending to religious matters. 11 His growing "spiritual sensitivities" 12 were accompanied by concerns about religion's importance (or lack thereof) to others as well. Many of Templeton's educated and successful friends neglected religion altogether, regarding it as "uninteresting and oldfashioned, or even obsolete." 13 Templeton speculated that their lack of interest was caused by ignorance about the many innovations in religions occurring around the world. He therefore established the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion in 1972, one of the purposes of which was "to call attention to a variety of persons who have found new ways to increase man's love of God or understanding of God." 14 Although the Prize sought to "stimulate the knowledge and love of God on the part of mankind everywhere," 15 Templeton seems to have had his own friends particularly in mind as a target audience. 16 The Templeton Prize is relevant to understanding Templeton's views about science because science features in some of his writing about the Prize and its purposes. In the first brochure about the Prize, for example, Templeton is adamant that progress in religion must be made, so that it will match the progress occurring in other areas. Because scientific progress has surged ahead, it has been a long time since the "last synthesis" of "religious knowledge and scientific knowledge" in which the two were "organically related." 17 Presumably to promote new syntheses, the analysis and exploration of the interface between science and theologysuch as through the "creation of new structures of understanding the relationship of God to the universe, to the physical sciences, the life science, and the human or man sciences"counts as one of the many realms in which a potential Prize-winner's contribution to religious progress might be made. 18 Science also matters insofar as it has a revelatory quality to it. In a document entitled "Who benefits?" written around the time of the Prize's creation, Templeton speaks in terms of God's readiness to "reveal Himself" to "those who seek by means of spiritual research" and to "those who seek by astronomy and physics." 19 The theological rationale behind this latter possibilityone attributable to the Unity School of Christianity, a tradition on which Templeton depended heavily (as his open acknowledgement of its influence and his frequent citation of its thinkers in his later writings indicates)is indicated in his 1976 Prize speech, in which Templeton claims that if God is infinite, then the universe "is not separate from God, but rather an outward manifestation of God himself." 20 This makes matter itself in some sense divine, or as Templeton observes of the "thousands of millions of stars and planets" in the Milky Way, "[e]ach is a little piece of God." By this logic, the "increasing discoveries" of natural scientists "are in reality discoveries about God." Because scientific discovery is revelatory, Templeton presciently wonders whether "some day" the Prize might go to an astronomer, geneticist, or other natural scientist whose work has helped to "increase Man's understanding of God." Templeton's early writings about his eponymous Prize suggest that his ideas about science's perceived religious benefits informed his philanthropic activities from the start. In his later books and essays, Templeton continues to view science as a source of knowledge and insights with which the world's religious traditions must grapple, and conceives of its religious potential in a broad range of ways.

The Humble Approach
Already by the early 1980s Templeton's engagement with science had for some years been augmented by personal encounters with scientists and science-and-religion scholars. Herrmann recalls of his first meetings with Templeton around that time that Templeton, "at the risk of being considered a novice in science … nevertheless interacted directly" with "scientific luminaries" including Bernard Lovell, Ilya Prigogine, and John Eccles. Templeton was also "strongly influenced" in scientific matters by the theologian Thomas Torrance, whom Herrmann describes as having a "keen sense of the relevance of recent scientific discovery to our understanding of God's creation." 21 Many of his encounters with these figures appear to have occurred in the context of Templeton's Prize and his other philanthropic efforts. Lovell, for example, was an early judge of the Prize, while Torrance was awarded the Prize in 1978, corresponded with Templeton, and later became a trustee of the John Templeton Foundation. 22 So important was science becoming for Templeton that it constituted a major preoccupation of his 1981 book, The Humble Approach. There he situates it within a cosmic historical and religious framework informed by the thinking of the Jesuit palaeontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. 23 The human race, Templeton claims, is located at a critical moment in history. Until we came along, evolution "proceeded routinely." But with the advent of human intelligence, "evolution no longer travels only on its own path." Human beings can change the future trajectory of evolution. We therefore find ourselves at a "new beginning" in the ongoing "creative process" taking place across the universe. God's plan, Templeton asserts, is for human beings to be "co-creators with Him in His continuing act of creation." Though we may choose otherwise, Templeton hopes we will use the abilities we have been given to "participate in His vast creative process." We have already developed an "enormous mountain of information" thanks to "five centuries of scientific progress." If we decide to "channel our creative restlessness toward helping to build the kingdom of God," we will create a future filled with "progressively unfolding spiritual discoveries." Those discoveries will lead to religions in which progress is "as outstanding and rapid as the astonishing advances in physics, astronomy and genetics." The resulting "genuinely dynamic and rapidly progressing" religions will, Templeton hopes, be immensely attractive. Through these gains, theology will no longer be regarded as obsolete, and will instead reclaim its place as queen of the sciences. 24 To make this possible, what is needed is the character trait mentioned in the book's title: humility. Too often, Templeton claims, egotism trumps humility. A "closed minded-attitude" inhibits "future progress," precludes recognition that "spiritual reality" can be "researched in ways similar to those used by natural scientists," and fails to acknowledge the possibility that one's "personal theology" might be "incomplete." Humility, by contrast, welcomes new ideas, admits that our concepts of God, the universe, and the self may be "too small," recognises the limits of what we currently know, and enables us to "begin to get into true perspective the infinity of God." Humility "opens the way forward," and thereby constitutes the "key to progress." Within this framework, science is valuable for several reasons. With humility in short supply, scientists are ideal role models, for they have purportedly "overcome" the "hurdle" of egotism, and they are "more open-minded" than many of us. The process of acquiring and formulating scientific knowledge and scientific theories that they daily undertake -"research[ing] the natural wonders of the universe, devising new hypotheses, testing them, challenging old assumptions, competing with each other in professional rivalry"is an intrinsically humbling process. 25 Science also matters because Templeton believes it "supports and illuminates" religion. 26 In this vein he is inspired by the insights about religion offered by illustrious scientists including Arthur Eddington, Albert Einstein, Vannevar Bush, Harold Schilling, Henry Margenau, and Allan Sandage, and by the ideas of science-and-religion scholars like 1980 Templeton Prize winner and founder of Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science Ralph Wendell Burhoe. Drawing from these and other figures, Templeton imagines science's support and illumination for religion taking an array of possible forms. The scientific study of nature, for example, benefits theology by telling us more about God. The laws of nature represent "fragments of knowledge about God." 27 This means that every time a new law of nature is discovered, it tells us "a little more about God and the ways He continually maintains and is building His creation." 28 The revelatory quality of science leads Templeton to adopt a very high view of scientific activity: "If the voice of science, however indirectly, is one of the voices of God, it should be listened to with reverence." 29 Science also constitutes a mode of religious experience: "perhaps the experience of God that we overlook most easily is the experience of Him through science." 30 Science also shows us how future empirical research on what Templeton variously calls the "spiritual world," "the supernatural," or "spiritual reality" 31 should be pursued. Those studies could be undertaken by "religious researchers," who might "devise appropriate experiments to uncover new data about spiritual laws in the same way that scientists study the laws of nature." 32 They could also be pursued by natural scientists who are independent of religious denominations. 33 Templeton even imagines scientists and theologians "pool[ing] their humility" to "explore together the distant corners of the universe," 34 with theologians adopting "appropriate empirical methods of research" and "statistical methods of science," 35 and becoming "to some extent theologians through science" 36 along the way. Ultimately, Templeton does not claim to know with certainty what the application of science's empirical approaches to spiritual matters will look like. Pursuing what he at one point calls the "science of the soul" may require the development of wholly new methodologies beyond those existing ones used to study physical phenomena. 37 It may mean the deployment of statistical or population methods rather than individually focused ones. 38 Few studies may in the end yield "verifiable truth." 39 Yet no matter how difficult or minimally productive such efforts may be, Templeton is convinced that they must be undertaken.
As Templeton recognises, his efforts in The Humble Approach to bring science and religion together are by no means without precedent. In addition to the eclectic collection of figures cited in the body of the book, its first edition also contains an over 100-pagelong bibliography listing hundreds of books, articles from learned journals, pieces from more popular periodicals, and publications in languages other than English that each relate in some way to "the subject of science and religion." 40 Yet what is notable about Templeton's thinking is the extent of the change that he thinks that science can bring about in religion. Templeton's revolutionary hopes in this regard are reflected in his notion of a "new reformation," 41 the possibility of which "depends upon scientists humble enough to admit that the unseen is vastly greater than the seen, and upon theologians humble enough to admit that some older concepts of God may need to grow." By adopting his "humble approach," scientists and theologians purportedly can expect to "develop a vastly larger cosmology and a wider, deeper theology." 42 Those theologians who "learn the value of being open-minded" 43 and who "keep pace with scientists" 44 will, Templeton hopes, produce a theology of "cosmic dimensions" that "resist[s] the historic trend of obsolescence" 45 and that generates the dynamism and vitality needed to make religion attractive again. 46 Such hopes remain a constant feature of Templeton's later writings.
The JASA Essays and The God Who Would Be Known In The Humble Approach, Templeton had tended to speak about science as a singular entity. He at times differentiated between different sciences (physics, astronomy, genetics, etc.), but he rarely discussed the content of any one of those sciences. In his later writings, whether because many of these are co-authored with a scientist, because of his interactions with scientists and science-and-religion scholars, or for other reasons, Templeton is much happier analysing specific scientific areas in detail. During the 1980s and 1990s he is especially attentive to the physical sciences, pondering at length its insights into both the material and the spiritual. At the same time, in the essays that appear in the Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation (hereafter the JASA essays) and in The God Who Would Be Known, Templeton raises concerns about specific difficulties in which science can be embroiled. Prime among these is the human propensity to become wedded to inferior metaphysical pictures. Erroneous pictures, he frets, can foreclose the possibility of seeing certain features of the world, or can lead us to misunderstand those features. They can also encourage scientists to overreach the bounds of their expertise. Metaphysical pictures also influence how one perceives God in relation to the world, with the wrong metaphysical picture making it much harder to see God in nature than Templeton thinks should be the case.
Templeton repeatedly either mentions or alludes to two problematic pictures in particular. The first conceives of the world as a "huge mechanism" or "machine." 47 According to this view, one he frequently associates with Isaac Newton, the world operates according to what he calls "strict causality," 48 which means that "if one knows the precise mechanical relationships between components before an event takes place, the outcome of that event can then be predicted with absolute certainty." 49 This vision of nature as a "tightly closed, self-sufficient system" 50 consisting of "tight little mechanisms" 51 leaves "no gaps … for spontaneous, unexpected events." 52 Theologically he regards this "rigid determinism" as deeply problematic, 53 for it makes it "difficult … to appreciate the need for the immanent Creator, constantly willing the order and consistency of His Creation." 54 The second picture is one in which chance is given an outsize role. Following scientist Donald MacKay, Templeton distinguishes between a legitimate "technical" understanding of chance as "the absence of the knowledge of causal connections between events," and a "popular" yet problematic understanding in which chance functions as a "metaphysical notion" that serves as an "alternative to God." 55 Templeton is critical of scientists like the biochemist Jacques Monod 56 who deploy this latter understanding of chance to support the atheistic idea that we are "alone" in an "unfeeling immensity of a universe" that possesses no "plan or purpose." 57 For them, the "apparent role of randomness in the fundamental workings of the universe" is a sign of "emptiness and meaninglessness." 58 Rigid determinism would mean constraint without novelty, while sheer chance would suggest meaningless chaos without direction. 59 Templeton thinks that neither of these views does justice to nature. Following John Polkinghorne (later recipient of the Templeton Prize), Templeton instead sees nature as a delicate balance of freedom and determinism, claiming that it is "best understood in terms of some very special type of interplay between chance and necessity." 60 Templeton finds support for this chance-and-necessity view in a range of phenomena uncovered by scientists. Those phenomena include the self-stabilisation of the genome, according to which "no mutation is entirely due to chance." 61 Templeton also points to dissipative structures, systems which similarly exhibit a "balance of deterministic and random events … the 'random' component appear[ing] to be anything but blind." 62 The "interplay of chance and lawful necessity" in these and other processes makes possible "new directions and possibilities." 63 Our universe exhibits an "openness," a "multiplicity of bifurcation points," that enables new forms and species to appear. 64 Thanks to these new possibilities, we live in "an exciting world in dynamic flux … where predictability is uncertain instead of deterministic … and where evolutionary change occurs by leaps and bounds that defy mechanistically simple explanation." 65 Templeton thinks that getting this metaphysical picture of nature correct is important for at least two reasons. One is that doing science well depends on it. Science should, he asserts, be practiced in a way that reflects this chance-and-necessity view of the world, rather than it being captive to either of the erroneous metaphysical pictures described above. In his 1985 JASA article Templeton frames his concerns about the kind of science that should be undertaken in terms of C.S. Lewis' concept of "regenerate science." 66 That kind of science, Lewis wrote, would not "explain away" when it explained something, it would "remember the whole" when it "spoke of the parts," and its "followers" would refrain from being "free with the words only and merely." 67 For Templeton, regenerate science is practiced by those scientists who are "not deluded by intellectual pride and doubt and who do not deny the metaphysical aspect of life." 68 It permits "the artistic, the poetic, [and] the religious" as the scientist "surveys the implications of his [sic] data." 69 It does not forget that science focuses only on "limited components, detailing the processes and mechanisms involved," and it does not risk "see[ing] the process but miss[ing] the plan." 70 And in the properly conducted scientific "quest for truth," there is no "prohibition of the subjective, the poetic or the religious." 71 From that vantage point, Templeton pleads with "those who have 'nestled into numbers for the duration'" to "look beyond the numbers to see the object, the process, the model, the phenomenon as part of a larger, more marvelous and mysterious whole." 72 The second reason Templeton worries about the metaphysical picture scientists adopt is because scientific developments are valuable not only for what they tell us about nature, but because they also point us to, and tell us about, God. Templeton is convinced that a "vastly higher intelligence" has "designed it all," 73 and believes it should be possible to trace the "superintelligent ordering of the universe" in nature itself. 74 Indeed, Templeton portrays The God Who Would Be Known as "a book about signals of transcendence, about pointers to the Infinite that are coming to us … through the most recent findings of science." 75 But as the two mistaken metaphysical pictures described above suggest, Templeton thinks we will never rightly identify the origin and content of those signalsand we will therefore have a much harder time getting from nature and science to Godif we get that picture wrong, or practice the wrong kind of science.
Provided we are not waylaid by such missteps, these signals can be detected in many places. One is in the fine balance of fundamental forces in nature that physicists have discovered. If any of those forces had been even minutely different from what they in fact are, human life may not have been possible. Divine design is thus hinted at by the improbability that those forces would be so fine-tuned as to allow lifeincluding our ownto emerge. Thanks to the "hand of the great Designer," 76 conditions in the developing universe have from the very beginning been amenable to our eventual appearance, and we can detect that fact from nature itself. 77 Design is also visible in a more present, active, and ongoing way in the interplay of chance and determinism in the historical development of the universe. Conditions in the universe may from the very beginning have been ripe for our appearance, but Templeton thinks that without the "correct ordering of reactions and environmental factors," history may have turned out very differently. Given that we may have appeared in only one or a limited number of the possible evolutionary paths that the cosmos might have taken, Templeton concludes from our existence that it is "not difficult to see, in this remarkable ordering of the universe, the hand of a Designer, guiding within precisely narrow limits the direction, magnitude and timing of each event of the universe." 78 Templeton at times speculates about what this divine guidance might look like, as when he draws on physicist William Pollard's work to suggest that God does not alter "natural probabilities," but instead selects from alternative possibilities at "each turning point." 79 Regardless of exactly how God acts in the world, the coordination of "more deterministic mechanisms with only the apparently random processes of mutation and selection" is in Templeton's view a means by which God can "realize the full potentialities … for His cosmos." 80 In Templeton's view, then, the metaphysical pictures of those scientists who think that the world is godless, or who think that God is distant from and uninterested in the deterministic and novelty-less world God has made, are wrong. When studied through socalled regenerate science, nature is recognisable for what it really is: filled with signals evincing God's care for and intimate involvement with the world that God has made. In place of the image of God as "only a machine-tender or caretaker" that accompanies more deterministic views of nature, Templeton thinks science points to an "immanent Creator, whose involvement with his vast creation every moment ensures its very existence as well as its order." 81 All of this leads Templeton to reiterate his earlier claim from The Humble Approach that science has a revelatory capacity: "Maybe God is revealing himself in all his immensity at an ever-accelerating pace through rapid discoveries in the sciences." 82 Now that claim is reinforced through reference to a wide range of actual phenomena in nature that scientists have studied and characterised. Through those scientists' work, Templeton says, we have "entered into the thought of the Designer, perhaps as a part of our legacy as His creation, as a part of our imago Dei." 83

Is God the Only Reality?
In the writings examined so far, Templeton generally is confident in science's powers to capture and describe reality. 84 In Is God the Only Reality? (hereafter IGTOR), he is a little less optimistic about science's abilities in this regard. His doubts arise from a growing appreciation of the philosophy of science, and from the nature of reality itself. Even though science may be limited in some respects, Templeton remains convinced that religion stands much to gain from partnering with it.
Templeton had previously engaged with aspects of the philosophy of science in his 1988 JASA essay "The Vast Arena of Faith." There he was drawn to the work of Michael Polanyi, whose philosophy of personal knowledge led Templeton to examine the nature of knowledge and objectivity, as well as the role of belief and faith in our knowing. 85 In IGTOR, Templeton opens with a version of the history of twentieth-century debates about realism told by later Templeton Prize winner Arthur Peacocke. 86 That history begins with early twentieth-century positivism, intensifies with the insights of Thomas Kuhn and subsequent anti-realist arguments by sociologists of science, and culminates with Ernan McMullin's middle-way embrace of what Peacocke calls a "skeptical," "qualified," or "critical" realism. Templeton seems to find McMullin's arguments persuasive, for throughout IGTOR he accepts the correspondingly provisional and approximate nature of scientific knowledge implied by McMullin's account. 87 Three other features of science also appear to contribute to Templeton's appreciation of science's provisional nature. The first is science's reliance on models. For critical realists, models are "essential and permanent features of science" which provide "partial and incomplete expression[s] of reality" that "no one would view as final truth." 88 Such models are "analogical and metaphorical," and they do not attempt to be "explicitly descriptive or literal." 89 The second is science's affective dimension. As Templeton notes, "scientific models are surely not devoid of the affective, more personal components, for it is people who do science." 90 The third is its apparent inability at times to take a firm hold of the very thing that it seeks to understand. We are, Templeton claims, repeatedly discovering through our scientific explorations that nature itself is elusive and intangible. 91 Even if science was a completely reliable way of gaining knowledge about nature, scientists would have a hard time locking onto it. 92 In light of these limitations, Templeton thinks that realism is still possible, but in a form that accepts that science's theories and models are only "approximations of the structures of reality." 93 Because of science's limits and nature's elusiveness, scientists have had, and likely will continue to have, considerable difficulty obtaining a "full description of physical reality." 94 Whether it be in fundamental physics or evolutionary biology, science will regularly fall short of expectations of explanatory comprehensiveness and completeness.
Despite this, Templeton nevertheless continues to insist that religion and theology have much to gain from partnering with science. How that partnership should be characterised had not received a single answer in Templeton's earlier publications. At one point, Templeton had suggested that science does have some limits, ones beyond which it cannot go and at which point it is necessary to turn to theology. 95 Elsewhere Templeton had spoken of philosophy and theology as disciplines that reflect on what science delivers to them, as when he encouraged exploration of the "theological and philosophical implications" of recent scientific discoveries. 96 At times Templeton had spoken about science and theology as though they already have quite similar pictures of the world with which they operate. 97 At other times Templeton had written of the need to "expand the whole field of theology." 98 Sometimes he had imagined a new kind of theology that might emerge from its partnership with science, as when he had written of a new kind of "experimental theology," 99 of a "theology of science," 100 or of Alister Hardy's goal of a "scientific theology." 101 At yet other times Templeton had written about the ways in which the two separate disciplines could merge into one another, as when he had examined the prospects for a "new syncretism between theology and science." 102 In IGTOR, by contrast, Templeton proposes thinking about science-and-religion relations in terms of a hierarchy of disciplines. Here he follows Peacocke's hierarchical understanding of disciplines, one that resists the reductionist push to resolve or explain higher levels of organisation solely in terms of lower levels (such as explaining biology in terms of chemistry, or social behaviour in terms of biology). Like Peacocke, Templeton claims that each scientific discipline is part of an "ascending arrangement or hierarchy of systems" in nature. 103 Theology's subject matterwhat Templeton (again following Peacocke) calls "the relationship nature-man-God"is broader than that of any specific science. Theology also has much more of an integrative impulse than do the disciplines at other levels in the hierarchy. For these reasons, theology "stands apart, or above, the various sciences." 104 Though this is the dominant way in IGTOR in which he conceptualises theology and religion's relations to science, Templeton continues to weave diverse other ways of imagining their relations through the book. One is the idea that scientists' research prompts them to examine territory already inhabited by religion and theology. Physicists like Stephen Hawking, Templeton notes, are now contemplating the origins of the universe, and in doing so, he says, they are being "driven, for scientific reasons, to questions that formerly were left to theologians." 105 Another is by seeing science and religion as providing separate yet complementary forms of explanation. Templeton poses the key questions when he asks, "does a solid scientific explanation say all there is to be said? Is there no other side to the coin?" 106 In his view, religious explanations provide a framing or perspective for phenomena in nature that do not undercut or negate scientific explanations. Theology operates on a different explanatory plane, using different kinds of models, metaphors, and languageoften ones that imply purpose and intentionalityfrom those typically employed by science. In the case of self-organisation in nature, for example, "scientific explanation … in terms of higher-level laws that are consistent with more fundamental laws" is "not a rival answer to the question of creation." 107 Yet another way of seeing their relations is at play when Templeton argues that the scientific study of nature provides direct theological insights into God's nature. For example, Templeton correlates nature's chance and necessity with specific ideas about God and God's plan for the created order. Following Polkinghorne again, Templeton sees God's faithfulness manifesting as the universe's lawfulness and regularity, and God's love as its openness and risk. 108 God is thus the "God of necessity and God of chanceboth reliable and vulnerable," 109 nature's trial and error becomes God's trial and error, and God gets a new name: Polkinghorne's "divine Juggler," or Templeton's "divine Experimenter." 110 Each of these ways of imagining how science and religion might relate is premised on the conviction that having religion and theology work with science is preferable to each side going alone. As Templeton says at one point, there is a much higher likelihood of success when different forms of knowledge are brought together. 111 Scientists and theologians should seize the opportunity to "pool their resources and explore together the vast reaches of the universe," 112 and thereby develop a "theology of humility." 113 Such "integration of the disciplines of science and religion" may not get us very far, 114 but Templeton is nevertheless convinced that we should try. 115

Possibilities
Templeton's final science-rich book, Possibilities for Over One Hundredfold More Spiritual Information, constitutes a heavily revised version of The Humble Approach. It shares the same overall historical and religious understanding of the cosmos, depicts the same vision of human life and purpose, presumes the same intimate relationship between science, humility, and open-mindedness, and displays the same buoyant confidence in science as Templeton's pre-IGTOR writings do. Possibilities expands on its predecessor by containing an extensive list of suggested areas for research written by physicist Paul Davies, who had been awarded the Templeton Prize in 1995. 116 Possibilities also differs from The Humble Approach in the language Templeton uses to conceptualise his vision.
A good example of this latter difference is the concept of spiritual information, a concept that shows just how integrated science and religion had become in Templeton's thought by this point. Templeton floated the idea of spiritual information at least as early as 1995 in a range of unpublished internal documents, and it seems to have first appeared in his published work in 1997. In Worldwide Laws of Life, for example, he had spoken of his desire to establish a "new branch of hard science: The Science of Spiritual Research," 117 and to pursue the "science of spiritual information and research." 118 In his introduction to an edited collection Templeton had described his hopes for "research for spiritual information about meaning and purpose and the invisible realities," and had characterised numerous past Templeton Prize winners as "scientists or scholars interested in increasing spiritual information through science." 119 There he also had identified a new field of science, one that would arise by "joining scientific research with Humility Theology … to learn new aspects of the Creator (spiritual information) by studying the deeper aspects of nature and by proposing new concepts to be verified or falsified." 120 One who participated in that new approach undertook a "spiritual quest through science." 121 "Spiritual information" fully comes into its own in Possibilities. There it is defined as consisting of those "concepts from religions which have proven beneficial," the study of which is in need of "millions of dollars daily for rigorous verifiable research." 122 The religious concepts he has in mind are what he calls "invisible realities," an older term to which Templeton had recently returned. 123 Templeton includes among those realities "love, purpose, creativity, intellect, thanksgiving, prayer, humility, praise, thrift, compassion, invention, truthfulness, giving and worship." 124 These matter to Templeton because, as "products or aspects of infinite intellect," 125 they may well, he claims, be "vastly more basic than things visible." 126 If the "sciences" can be encouraged to "help religions to research basic invisible realities," 127 then spiritual information will increase, and we will in turn "learn a bit more of infinite intellect" itself. 128 In Possibilities Templeton also provides a novel description of how this new information will relate to existing religious texts and insights: it should "supplement the wonderful ancient scriptures." 129 In The Humble Approach, Templeton seemed less than fully convinced of the ongoing merits of sacred texts, and was rather more equivocal about the consequences of religious progress for them. 130 In the reworked version he is unequivocal in his valorisation of sacred writingsthose "wonderfully beneficial" 131 texts that "stand at the core of most religious cultures" 132and suggests that the "creative challenge" is to "enrich understanding and appreciation for the old" by "concepts and perspectives which may represent truly new insights and creative improvements." 133 His goal then becomes to "leverage the power of the past" for the "adventure of learning more and more about the wonders of god and his purposes." 134 Possibilities thus maintains Templeton's strong desire for science-driven progress in religion, while insisting that this progress will complement, rather than overturn, what is already known.
Beyond its new ways of speaking about the kinds of things on which researchers should focus (invisible realities), and about the gains that are waiting to be made when science is brought to bear on them (new spiritual information that supplements existing scriptures), Possibilities also shows how Templeton utilises this language to define the purposes of his philanthropic organisations. There he states that a "major aim" of his foundations is "to encourage all religions to become enthusiastic about the concepts of spiritual progress and new spiritual information, especially by linking with scientific methods and lines of inquiry." 135 The newer language is taken up in the 1998 purpose clause of the John Templeton Foundation, which describes one of the goals of "Humility-in-Theology" as helping "spiritual information to multiply … especially by encouraging people of all religions to become enthusiastic … to new additional spiritual information, especially through science research, to supplement the wonderful ancient scriptures." 136 Viewed in the context of his thinking over the preceding three decades, Templeton's philanthropic support of these activities represents a natural outgrowth of his longstanding interest in science's potential for religion. The language used in Possibilities to describe those interests may differ from that employed in his earlier publications, but the substance of Templeton's views about science in that late book, and about science's religious utility, remain broadly consistent with the nascent ideas articulated nearly 30 years earlier in relation to the Templeton Prize.

Conclusion
For someone without specialised training in the subject, John Templeton's discussions of science are surprisingly detailed and wide-ranging. Achieving the level of understanding of science that Templeton's writings exhibit would doubtless have been facilitated by his collaboration with the scientist Robert Herrmann, and aided by his interactions with the many scientists and science-and-religion scholars that his philanthropic activities would over the years have put him in contact with. Templeton's scientific sophistication should not be exaggerated. In his co-authored works with Herrmann their discussions of science frequently are of a derivative nature, in the sense that the original scientific research that underlies whatever they discuss has already been digested by someone else. They regularly cite works of popular science, and they frequently borrow lengthy quotations from books and articles by science-and-religion scholars in which religious implications have already begun to be drawn out. Although he relied heavily on others when engaging with science, that doesn't detract from the fact that Templeton's name appears on works in which scientific research is taken seriously, and in which scientific theorising and experimentation is discussed with care and attention. In an era like ours in which scientific knowledge is frequently regarded with suspicion, Templeton's commitment to, and trust in, science should be celebrated.
As might be expected for an amateur enthusiast, Templeton's handling of science is not without fault. He is a little naïve about the extent to which scientists are genuinely humble. Many scientists may be willing to revise aspects of their thinking in the light of new findings or theories, but they (like the rest of us) often possess deep commitments that are hard to overturn. This is often the case for those scientific paradigms or research programmes inside which they may have long worked, and to which they remain steadfastly devoted. That devotion may also reflect the fact that it can be difficult to determine precisely when a theory should be overturned or replaced by something else, for it is often the case that an existing theory can be modified to accommodate new findings. Templeton may also be suitably circumspect about the limits of science in Is God the Only Reality?, but it is not clear that he takes those limits fully on board in subsequent works. In Possibilities, for example, Templeton writes about the limits of human knowledge, but there he does so with reference either to the small proportion of what we know in comparison to what there is to be known, or to the limited extent to which human beings who possess five senses can know the fullness of transcendent reality.
Though his handling of certain aspects of science may leave a little to be desired, Templeton's main goal was not the flawless presentation of science's countless facets. Rather, Templeton engaged so extensively with science, and wrote so passionately in favour of it, because of its perceived religious potential. As we have seen, he conceived of that potential in a range of ways. At times he saw science itself as breaking down barriers and expanding its boundaries to enter territory previously inhabited by religion. At other times, he imagined a variety of forms of partnership between science and religion, ones that would revolutionise the latter by encouraging the development of new methods, by prodding religion to be open to new insights and ideas, and by providing religions with greater knowledge about God. At yet other times, he foretold the dissolution of the two into one another, thereby creating a wholly new entity. By floating such an eclectic set of possibilities, Templeton comes across as someone searching for, without settling on, a way of thinking about science in relation to religion that captures the full range of possibilities that the former represents for the latter. That range of possibilities also attests to the diverse array of thinkers he relied on when formulating his views.
Although he wrote a great deal about science and science-and-religion issues, the paucity of critical interaction with Templeton's writings suggests that few scholars working in the field of science and religion regard them as making a scholarly contribution to ongoing discussions and debates. While this judgementone ideally made only after sustained critical engagement with the content of his argumentsmay in the end be justified, his writings nevertheless remain vitally important documents for the field, a field that his funding has almost single-handedly kept afloat. 137 From a historical perspective, they illuminate the thinking and motivations of a key figure responsible for the emergence and consolidation of the field. Their contentswhich, as we have seen, feed directly into the purposes of his philanthropiesalso shed valuable light on those philanthropies' funding priorities, and thus on the shape those priorities have given the field. Future work might delve further into Templeton's influence on the field by exploring how his raw ideas about science and science-and-religion as expressed in his public-facing writings, along with the categories and concepts he developed from those ideas which became part of his instructions for his philanthropies, connect to the taxonomies that his philanthropies' trustees and staff use to translate his instructions into ideas, concepts, and categories understandable to the wider world, 138 and to the specific projects that his philanthropies have actually funded. Tracing these these connections would illuminate how Templeton's ideas have led his philanthropies to support activities in some areas but not others, 139 and could reveal the extent of the alignment between Templeton's ideas and the work his philanthropies have supported.
The substantial extent to which Templeton thinks science might be helpful to religion raises questions about whether science can bear all the religious weight he puts on it. Templeton is doubtless right to want to expand science's scope as much as possible, to see what light it can shed on as many aspects of realitywhether physical or spiritual as it can. But speaking of science's revelatory capacity will likely be convincing only to those who already share Templeton's metaphysical commitments. Templeton's confidence in science's ability to persuade us of the reality of a transcendent ground behind and within all things may be excessive, not least because of the limitations of science that he at times recognises. And Templeton's speculations about the possibility of a future composite entity emerging from today's separate realms of "science" and "religion" undoes the Victorian-era efforts by Thomas Henry Huxley and others to professionalise science by ridding it of its religious elements. His speculations therefore are unlikely to be welcomed by those keen to keep religion out of science.
As someone who regarded humanity as perched on the cusp of a new historical era, one filled with opportunities to learn more about the cosmos through scientific study for anyone willing to seek them out, Templeton likely would not have worried much about such criticisms. Provided those whose research leads to transgressions or renegotiations of subject and disciplinary boundaries rely on rigorous methods in the pursuit of legitimate knowledge and genuine insight about reality, their efforts would probably have been of both personal and philanthropic interest to him. Even if the not-infrequent criticism of his foundations indicates that not everyone is pleased by his support for such efforts, Templeton's bold and carefree attitude toward disciplinary boundaries and identities, and his insistence that scientific methods may well be applicable more broadly than is often thought, are worthy of our attention.