The projects that make up this consortium probe new ways of doing research that cut across disciplines and involve diversely trained scholars. Testable hypotheses can be formulated by blending consortium-wide specific discoveries with thorough targeted literature reviews, survey work, and comparative analyses of other sectors to better comprehend how a community can (or should) evolve and the kinds of trade-offs that exist between group cohesion and intellectual diversity, especially on a complex theme such as teleology.
The consortium is a mechanism to prevent commonly themed research projects from remaining isolated and potentially duplicating efforts or missing opportunities for collaboration. It is also a mechanism for identifying and cultivating the most promising new ideas. Since most good ideas evolve over time, especially those that are inherently interdisciplinary, the Consortium for Advancing the Science of Purpose moves away from guessing about the “best” projects or people and instead creates an ecosystem - a community of practice - that nurtures emergent and conceptually risky ideas.