For the John Templeton Foundation, I wrote about the intriguing interplay between hope and optimism in contemporary research.
A new paper published by the John Templeton Foundation explores the latest scientific and philosophical research on the related but distinct virtues of hope and optimism. The 45-page white paper, written by Michael Milona, a philosophy professor at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada, examines findings on the benefits and risks involved in both hope and optimism. Milona’s summary gave particular focus to the results of another Templeton-funded initiative, “Hope & Optimism: Conceptual and Empirical Investigations,” a three-year, $4.4 million project led by Samuel Newlands at Notre Dame and Andrew Chignell at the University of Pennsylvania, which funded projects by more than 29 researchers worldwide on topics on the effects of hope and optimism in education, faith, healthcare, politics, and more.
A few days after the release of Milona’s white paper, it was featured prominently in “Finding Hope When Everything Feels Hopeless,” by *Wall Street Journal *columnist Elizabeth Bernstein. For the article, Bernstein spoke with Milona about the role of remembering history in the cultivation of hope. “If you look at how surprising events often come about in unpredictable ways, it can get you out of a fatalist way of thinking,” Milona said.