CONFERENCE "MULTIDISCIPLINARITIES IN ARTS, SCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY" BY INT'L SOCIETY OF EUROPEAN IDEAS

THE 13th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF



ISSEI
International Society for the Study of European Ideas




IN COOPERATION WITH




CALL FOR PAPERS

The Ethical Challenge of Multidisciplinarity:
Reconciling ‘The Three Narratives’—Art, Science, and Philosophy

Language—and by extension our story telling activities in general—enables us to confront the contingencies of life by answering the immediate question: what’s happening and what is going to happen next. Science also attempts to answer this question. However, there appears to be—at least in the western cultural tradition—a fundamental tension between the literary-artistic and the scientific projects: whereas the artist seeks to recreate human experience, thereby evoking basic ethical issues, the scientist seeks ethically-neutral, evidence-based facts, as the constituents of our knowledge of reality. It is thus left to others—to the philosopher, theologian, critic, or historian—to bridge the theoretical and ethical gaps between the world of ‘fiction’ and the world of ‘fact’, of art and science. Among other things, the ever increasing rate of production of scientific data in the modern age poses a new multidisciplinary challenge: how to address the unresolved/unresolvable tensions between the language of normativity and the language of facticity.

The organizers of the 13th ISSEI Conference invite scholars from various academic fields to discuss the ethical challenge of multidisciplinarity by characterizing the scope, effects and implications of the discontinuities among ‘the three narratives’: to consider how artists, scientists, and philosophers have articulated, explained and responded to them and/or have attempted to reconcile them.

Previous ISSEI conferences were held in 1988 – Amsterdam; 1990 – Leuven; 1992 – Aalborg; 1994 – Graz; 1996 – Utrecht; 1998 – Haifa; 2000 – Bergen; 2002 – Aberystwyth; 2004 – Pamplona; 2006 – Malta; 2008 – Helsinki; 2010 – Ankara.

What one regular conference participant has to say about the ISSEI conferences:

ISSEI’s composition is an invitation to move beyond the limits you have set for yourself, the constraints you have imposed on your own thinking, breaking through to new levels of performance and ability.
ISSEI’s engaging in age-old questions brings new dimensions and casts new light on situations and events of Europe’s history and perspective. – Prof. Dr. Heinz-Uwe Haus, Dept. of Theatre, University of Delaware, USA.

If you would like to participate in the conference by presenting a paper in one or more of the workshops please note the following:

Length of Paper:
Papers should not exceed 3000 words or 10 double spaced pages, including Notes. Notes need not be included in the presentation of the papers but they should be in the version intended for the proceedings.

Deadline
The deadline for submitting your abstract to a Workshop Chair is April 15, 2012.

To whom shall I submit my paper?
On the conference website, http://issei2012.haifa.ac.il/ you will find a list of approximately 80 workshops with Chairs from over 30 countries. Papers should be submitted directly to the workshop Chair. If you are not sure for which Workshop(s) your paper(s) would be most suitable please send a short abstract to Prof. Ezra Talmor (issei@nachshonim.org.il). He will then suggest a workshop Chair for you to contact.

We look forward to seeing you in Cyprus in 2012.

Conference Chairs:

Ezra Talmor, ISSEI
issei@nachshonim.org.il
Marianna Papastephanou, University of Cyprus
edmari@ucy.ac.cy