Here’s an interesting grant opportunity to do research on wisdom: The Arete Initiative at the University of Chicago (www.uchicago.edu) has announced a $2 million research program on the nature and benefits of wisdom. The three-year initiative is intended to generate high quality research on wisdom and develop a network of young scholars and scientists from a variety of disciplines. The program seeks to support highly original, methodologically rigorous projects from a broad range of disciplines: neuroscience, psychology, genetics, evolutionary biology, game theory, computer science, sociology, anthropology, economics, philosophy, ethics, education, human development, history, theology, and religion.

Examples of projects might include: wisdom in the context of risk and uncertainty; wisdom in the context of real-world unknowables; wisdom in the context of social norms; finding new wisdom in the context of optimization models in biology and computer science; new wisdom in the context of changing of ethical systems and law; wisdom in selecting subjective preference weights in the context of economic models; the art of balancing long-term and short term considerations and trade-offs; wisdom in the design of institutional structures; new ways to learn/teach emerging kinds of wisdom; wisdom in nature; and wisdom in the practice of compassion (forgiveness, international aid programs, etc.)

In 2008, the initiative will award up to twenty, two-year research grants to scholars from institutions around the world who have received their Ph.D. within the past ten years. Principal Investigators for the winning projects will become members of a Wisdom Research Network and will participate in two network meetings over the course of their projects. Visit the program’s Web site for application guidelines: www.wisdomresearch.org. The deadline for letters of intent is November 19, 2007.