Finding spirituality in science benefits wellbeing and learning

Science involves the systematic search for knowledge. But as the authors of a new paper note, it's a lot more than simply an exercise in cold calculation. "It can yield awe-inspiring discoveries and theories that create meanings, feelings of connection, and wonder," write Jesse L Preston at the University of Warwick and colleagues in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. As their new work reveals, this can constitute a spiritual experience, with benefits for both wellbeing and learning. 

Spiritual experiences have traditionally been associated with religion. Research has shown, though, that the transcendent emotions, sense of connection, and sense of meaning that often define a spiritual experience can be triggered in other, secular settings; for example, while experiencing nature. 

Though it's commonly known that science can also lead to feelings of awe, and a powerful sense of meaning, spirituality of science is a young branch of scientific investigation. So young, in fact, that the first task for the present paper's team was to develop and validate a scale to assess the phenomenon. Their 10-item Spirituality of Science (SoS) scale captures individual differences in agreement with statements such as 'Science reveals the beauty of the world we live in' and 'All things are connected through science'. 

The researchers then recruited 526 agnostic and atheist adults, who then completed the newly created SoS scale, plus a questionnaire that assessed their belief in science and various wellbeing measures. These included measures of their perceived stress levels, happiness, and life satisfaction. 

The results showed that the SoS scores were linked to almost all of the wellbeing measures, including happiness and feeling that one's life has meaning (while levels of belief in science were not related to most of these measures). Earlier work has linked religious beliefs to greater wellbeing and a sense of meaning; the new findings suggest that finding spirituality in science fosters these things, too. 

In another study on 171 students, the researchers explored whether people who scored higher for SoS would engage more with scientific information and remember it better. These participants read about either research on black holes or applying for a mortgage, and later answered three questions on the information they'd consumed. They also completed measures of their belief in science, as well as a 'Small Self scale', which tapped into feelings often associated with spiritual experience of being 'small' in relation to someone or something greater than oneself. 

The team found that higher SoS scores were linked (albeit not particularly strongly) to higher scores on the Small Self scale. They were also linked to greater self-reported engagement with the black hole material, and to better scores on the black hole test — though not to scores on the mortgage information test. Correct responses to the black hole questions were not linked to scores on the measure of belief in science, however. Overall, the results suggest that people who ranked higher for SoS did better on black hole test because they were more engaged with the scientific material, the team writes. 

Clearly, not everyone will find science to be a source of spiritual experiences. But for those who do, this new work suggests that it can have both emotional and intellectual benefits. It also suggests that science, for some people, may act as an alternative to religion in providing spirituality-related benefits to wellbeing. 

There are limits to the conclusions that can be drawn from this research, however. For one, the wellbeing experiment was conducted only on agnostics and atheists. Whether religious people could gain additional wellbeing benefits from science-related spirituality is yet to be explored. As the team themselves write, though, this new work represents an introduction to the topic, and a jumping-off point for new lines of research in this fascinating area.

Read the paper in full: https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672231191356