CENTER LEO APOSTEL Vrije Universiteit Brussel 

 

  

Date : Nov. 10, 1997 (modified); Sep. 1995 (created)

The Center "Leo Apostel"

 

Photo: Leo Apostel in his study in Gent, about 1986 

 The Center "Leo Apostel" (CLEA) is a recently founded transdisciplinary research department. It is situated at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), but its board of directors covers different Flemish universities. It is named after the Belgian philosopher and logician Leo Apostel (1925-1995). Apostel donated the money of the Solvay prize, which he received for his life work, to the VUB in order to create such a center. 

The center's aim is the development of world views that integrate the results of different scientific and cultural disciplines (as elaborated by Apostel and collaborators in their treatise "Worldviews: from fragmentation to integration"). CLEA in particular tries to bridge the gap between the natural sciences and the social sciences and humanities. As a first international activity, CLEA organized the very successful interdisciplinary conference 'Einstein meets Magritte', which is to be repeated in 1999. 

CLEA's key objectives were summarized by Apostel as:

See also: References to Apostel on other web servers, biography of Apostel (Dutch)

General Information

For the members of the board of directors, collaborators and advisory board, see the CLEA participants.

Address
Center "Leo Apostel"
Krijgskundestraat 33
1160 Brussels, Belgium
(just outside the VUB campus "Oefenplein", 2nd side street on the left on the Triomflaan, when coming from the Gen. Jacqueslaan, see: how to reach the VUB)
Secretariat
Sylvia Stuer
Director
Diederik Aerts
Phone
+32 - 2 - 644 26 77
Fax
+32- 2 - 644 07 44
E-mail
einmag@vub.ac.be
World-Wide Web
http://cleamc11.vub.ac.be/CLEA/
Mailing list
CLEA has an electronic mailing list, clea-wg, for all people wishing to keep informed about CLEA activities. To join: send the one line message:


subscribe clea-wg


to Majordomo@listserv.vub.ac.be

News

CLEA Study Groups

CLEA has started with the organization of study groups, discussing specific themes within the general CLEA framework. These groups may include people who are not directly associated with CLEA, selected by the group's chairperson. The following groups have been created (some are still tentative):

Collaborations

The Center "Leo Apostel" (CLEA) is associated with the following international organizations:

CLEA presides a "Research Community" of research centers collaborating on the Construction of Integrating World Views. The Fund for Scientific Research - Flanders provides these centers with funding to organize meetings and exchanges. The other participating centers are:

Interdisciplinary Seminar Series "Foundations"

The Center is responsible for organizing seminars on fundamental scientific problems and research methodologies. These are part of the interdisciplinary program for PhD. students (in collaboration with the PhD. program of the University of Antwerp). In the series "Foundations", CLEA invites scholars that are actively engaged in research on the foundations of a particular discipline. Seminars are very interactive, and addressed to a broad, interdisciplinary audience without specific knowledge of the domain. The discussions aim at confronting the foundations of the different disciplines.

Typical seminars consist of one hour of presentation by the lecturer with direct questions, a break during which sandwiches and drinks are served, and one hour or more of in-depth group discussion of the general subject. Seminars generally take place at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Campus Oefenplein), Pleinlaan 2, 1050 Brussels, Belgium, at 5 pm, in different rooms.

You can check the abstracts and biographies of lecturers for the list of previous seminars. Most of those are available on video and can be borrowed.

Recent and upcoming seminars:

Artwork by the youngest CLEA collaborator, Jonito Aerts 

Further Information

This page is maintained by Francis Heylighen