Catholic U. professor awarded nearly $4M to study beauty as ‘basic human need’

A Catholic University of America sociology professor has received a $3.89 million grant to lead a first-of-its-kind study this fall exploring how encounters with beauty shape meaning, purpose, and spirituality, especially among people who are “spiritual but not religious.”

“The grant will support the interdisciplinary initiative launching this fall, ‘Can Beauty Save the World?: Aesthetic Engagement Among the Spiritual But Not Religious,’ which aims to respond to Dostoyevsky’s famous question that is the project’s namesake,” the announcement from CUA reads.

Sociology Professor Brandon Vaidyanathan, who is leading the study, told The College Fix via email the goal of the project is “to expand the public recognition of the importance of beauty as a basic human need.” 

He also hopes the study will “expand our imagination of what beauty is” and “serve as a powerful catalyst to spur scholars, practitioners, and communities to take beauty seriously as a force for good in the world.”

Beauty “gets reduced too often to either fashion and cosmetics on the one hand, or to high art (Mozart or Palestrina or Gothic cathedrals),” Vaidyanathan told The Fix. 

However, it encompasses much more, and he aims to “measure how it’s shaping people’s lives.”

He said the study focuses on individuals known as “nones,” who do not identify with any particular religion. 

“There’s a sizeable portion of the population that identifies as ‘spiritual but not religious,’” Vaidyanathan said.

They are interested in the metaphysical and spiritual, but either were not raised in a religion or left their religion, he said. 

“We’re interested in understanding how this demographic finds meaning and purpose, and what role encounters with beauty play in shaping that sense of meaning or perhaps even transformation in this population,” he said.

The study will involve reaching these individuals “through nationally representative surveys and follow-up interviews, as well as fieldwork in aesthetically charged public festivals like the Venice Carnival as well as smaller venues such as choral music groups which may be sites of profound encounters with beauty,” Vaidyanathan said.

Regarding his hypothesis for the study, the project leader said his “hunch is that in a context of decline of shared meaning, trust, and connection in secular societies, encounters with beauty–both at the individual and collective levels–might offer an antidote to the ‘malaise of modernity’ as Charles Taylor calls it, and perhaps a pathway to transcendence.”

Vaidyanathan previously explored the role of beauty in science, inspired by an international study of scientists across eight countries. During interviews, many participants said they pursued their work “because it’s beautiful,” prompting him to launch a five-year research project to better understand beauty’s role in science.

After observing how beauty inspired scientists and sharing those insights through his podcast and YouTube channel, Vaidyanathan said he now hopes “to understand if and how beauty matters for people in general — can we study it at the population level?”

“Can we change the public perception around it (i.e., so that people see it as more than just the beauty industry)? Can encountering beauty be spiritually transformative for people?” he told The Fix. 

The project is funded by the John Templeton Foundation, which aims to “support interdisciplinary research and catalyze conversations that inspire awe and wonder,” according to its website. 

The project will produce three book proposals, “15 peer-reviewed journal articles, 20 popular articles, 15 conference presentations, a new survey dataset, and 7 teaching syllabi,” the Templeton Foundation stated in its announcement.  

“Public-facing events, including symposia, conferences, retreats, workshops, and salon dinners, will extend the impact beyond academia, sparking global conversations about the transformative role of beauty in contemporary society,” it states. 

Project researchers include Tara Isabella Burton, a visiting research fellow and lecturer at CUA serving as co-director, along with co-investigators Anjan Chatterjee, a neurology professor at the University of Pennsylvania; Katie Bank, a history research fellow at the University of Birmingham; Rebekah Wallace, a junior research fellow in theology and philosophy at the University of Oxford; and Stephen Bullivant, a professor of theology and the sociology of religions at St. Mary’s University.

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