I’m reading archaeologist Gregory J. Wightman’s The Origins of Religion in the Paleolithic, and thinking hard about how we humans evolved over the past several million years with a “God-shaped hole” in our psyches. I haven’t found the answer yet, but Philosopher Alain de Botton suggested in a recent interview that it is culture that can serve to fill that genuine sense of void that many of us sometimes feel in our modern lives.

You only have to look at the architecture of libraries and theaters and universities that were built in the age of declining religion to understand that our ancestors sought to fill the gap by creating temples of art, temples of culture, temples of learning, where we would congregate as we had previously done in the temples of religion.

I have certainly sensed the numinous in the great museums of the world, among the graves of poets, composers, and scientists, and deep inside a Neolithic passage tomb.

Culture and the knowledge that it’s built on — but, most importantly, the processes and methods that increase, transmit, and store that knowledge — represent all that is good and holy about our species. While museums that house our art and science are certainly worthy of reverence, for sheer density of knowledge it’s hard to find a better temple of culture than a library.

The Guardian recently published a gorgous photo essay (though I’m unable to re-share their photos) of the most beautiful libraries in America. I’m proud to say that two of these libraries are right here in Seattle. In fact, for the first three months after I started up my previous company’s new Engineering hub, my team and I met each Friday at the Seattle Central Library, designed by Rem Koolhaas and Joshua Prince-Ramus.

I haven’t yet visited the Suzzallo Library at the University of Washington, but its Gothic Revival architecture certainly evokes European cathedrals, proving Alain de Botton’s point about 19th-century architects of secular institutions.

Since appending “5 more museums to visit before I die” to my list of favorite museums back in 2009, I’ve visited several of them (the Met in New York, the Prado) and it may be time for a new list that includes museums I hadn’t anticipated loving so much (MOMA, Museo Arqueológico Nacional in Madrid).

And the Guardian has provided a convenient list of new places for pilgrimage I hope to visit in my lifetime.