At the end of the educational workshop, web-streaming replay will be available at the same web address.

The “Science, Technology and Ethics” one-day conference, which was organized by the Onassis Foundation in collaboration with the Department of the Classics of Harvard University, was successfully completed in the Science Center Hall of Harvard University on Saturday, November the 3rd 2012. This event is part of the Athens Dialogues project, in the context of which academic events are organized in Greece and abroad on issues that occupy the contemporary world and which are examined through challenging perspectives of ancient Greek thought.

The President of the Organizing Committee, Professor George Babiniotis, welcomed the participants in his introductory speech and underlined the following: “Technology is sometimes viewed as a force that diminishes the creative possibilities of human life and enhances material prosperity. Science, on the other hand, is regarded as mere knowledge, as a vast amount of information, which usually contradicts any sense of ethics. Such real or constructed conflicts could possibly be resolved under the perspective of ancient Greek interpretation of the concept of wisdom, which marks the transition from knowledge, as mere information, to the combination of knowledge, ethos and therefore, ethics. Concepts such as ethos and wisdom bridge the gap and help us overcome the conflicts that we have already mentioned.

In Greece, which faces a painful economic crisis today- a crisis that tends to become international many intellectuals and scientists are convinced that, in order to overcome the economic crisis and to create an optimistic option for the future, it is necessary- among other things- to define today’s problems and to find a way to resolve them. An inspiring, challenging, international and interdisciplinary dialogue on such issues as those that our event deals with can prove to be quite constructive in our days. Besides, dialogue and dialectical thinking are both a diachronic Greek proposal”.

On Harvard’s part, convener Mark Schiefsky, Chair of the Department of the Classics at Harvard University, emphasized the importance of revisiting Greek thought through a modern perspective, as well as the importance of examining the various forms of art that embrace knowledge, craft and technology.

Prominent scientists, intellectuals and artists who have been preoccupied with science, technology and ethics in relation to art, participated in this event. During the first session, “Science, Technology and Society”, Michael Herzfeld, Professor of Social Sciences in Harvard University, examined the various perspectives of social consciousness in Greece. Constantinos Daskalakis, Associate Professor of Computer Science at MIT, examined the possibility of creating models similar to those used in computer science that could play a decisive role if applied in economy and society in general. In the session that was dedicated to philosophy, Sean Kelly, Professor of Philosophy in Harvard University, approached technology as a form of art using platonic and aristotelian references while Albert Borgmann, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Montana, extracted his material from ancient philosophy in order to discuss modern issues that relate to science and ethics. In the “Ethics and Medicine” session, issues that relate to medical humanities were discussed. The two speakers examined various issues such as, the importance of narrating a disease as it is recorded in the medical records, which reveals the complexity of human nature as well as the quality of life in the modern cultural environment. Finally, in the fourth session, which was dedicated to art, the MIT Museum Director, Professor John Durant, talked about the way art can become a means of understanding science while he indicated the artistic value of some research experiments through examples from the MIT Museum. Suzanne Anker, visual artist and theorist, indicated how scientific evidence can inspire artistic creativity and trigger the production of contemporary art, if combined with a rich theoretical background.

The speakers had the chance to share their views with each other as well as with the public as an interdisciplinary dialogue was encouraged and achieved. The discussion continues on the Athens Dialogues official website (www.athensdialogues.org) and the electronic journal, which is edited by the Center for Hellenic Studies of Harvard University (CHS).

Alexander S. Onassis Foundation Cultural Center non-profit Organization in cooperation with the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens organizes a one-day workshop entitled The Immigration Challenge on Saturday September 22nd 2012 from 9.30 until 17.30 at the Onassis Cultural Centre/Athens. Prominent scientists from around the world as well as from Greece will participate in this event.

Modern societies experience rapid political and economic changes such as the economic crisis, the new social movements, the rise of unemployment, poverty, new epidemics etc. As a result, they are expected to adopt a new attitude towards today’s responsibilities and tomorrow’s challenges. These conditions as well as the transitional and turbulent context, in which modern societies have found themselves, render the need to re-examine the issue of immigration quite urgent.

This workshop aims at creating a communication channel where different opinions will be expressed by representatives of the political and social sciences, the humanities and the arts, thus allowing for a fruitful and creative dialogue on the issue of immigration, to be seen as a challenge within the new conditions that have been formed on an international level and with a strong presence in Greece today as well.

The workshop is part of the wider problematic in Platonic philosophy that questions the responsibility of the state and focuses on today’s responsibilities and tomorrow’s challenges.

The discussion will focus on four thematic sessions which will attempt to analyze the immigration challenge: social sciences, education, urban landscape and art.

The speakers for each session are the following:

Social Sciences: Professor Riva Kastoryano (CNRS, Paris) and Professor George Prevelakis (Sorbonne, Paris I)
Education: Professor Leonie Herwartz-Emden (University of Augsburg) and Professor
Thalia Dragona (University of Athens)
Urban Landscape: Professor Guy Burgel (Paris Ouest-Nanterre) and Professor Panayotis Tournikiotis (National Technical University of Athens)
Art: Professor Ulrike Hanna Meinhof (University of Southampton) and Mihalis Afolayan (ΑSANTE, ANASA)

Chairs for each session: Professors Konstantinos Tsoukalas, Georgios Babiniotis, Ioannis Polyzos and Vana Xenou.

Respondents for each session: Nikodemos Maina Kiniwa, Christina Veikou, Thomas Maloutas and Heracles Moskoff.

The Athens Dialogues

This one day workshop is part of the Athens Dialogues project, organized by the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation in collaboration with eight world class academic institutions (the Institut de France, the Academia dei Lincei, the University of Oxford, Stanford University, the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, the Center for Hellenic Studies of Harvard and the Academy of Athens)and held at the Onassis Cultural Centre in November 2010, with the participation of prominent scientists from all over the world. The beginning of this scientific and cultural project was highly received on an international level while more than 50,000 people watched the conference live through the internet.

The Athens Dialogues is an ongoing project, which is also continued through the electronic scientific journal entitled the Athens Dialogues e-journal. The e-journal is edited by the Center for Hellenic Studies of Harvard University while Professor Gregory Nagy is the editor in chief. This pioneering electronic platform, which was designed especially for the Athens Dialogues, publishes the essays and the presentations of the speakers as well as the open dialogue between the audience and the scientists, through an application that signals a new era for electronic media. The texts are enriched with
various links and can be used in multiple ways. In the new phase of the Athens Dialogues project, which started in 2011 with the one-day conference that was organized in Columbia University, NY, an emphasis is given to the problems that concern modern man and the world that will have been formed within the next few decades. This event, which approaches the burning issue of immigration, is part of this context. The issue of “Today’s Responsibilities – Tomorrow’s Challenges” was also examined at the one-day conference at Columbia University, with the collaboration of Karen van Dyck and the participation of important scientists such as Mark Mazower, Helene Foley, Peter Meineck, Gregory Nagy, Andreas Kalyvas et al. The success of the event was apparent judging from the participation of a various audience.

Three annual events have been planned for 2012 and 2013 both in Greece and abroad. In 2012 three one-day workshops have been scheduled. The issues that will be examined are Immigration (at the Onassis Cultural Centre, September 22nd), Science, Technology and Ethics (Harvard University, Boston, November3rd) and Digital Technology with an emphasis on democracy and education (Onassis Cultural Centre, December1st).
The Boston event, organized in collaboration with Harvard University, is expected to be of particular importance. The relationship between science, technology and ethics will be examined from the diachronic perspective of philosophy, medicine and artand in relation to the rapid changes in the field of exact sciences. Amongst the participants are Ruth Faden (John Hopkins University) George Khushf (University of
South Carolina), Albert Borgmann (University of Montanna), Sean Kelly (Harvard University) and Costis Daskalakis (MIT).

Greek Cogitation Colloquia: Expreriential Learning Programs

The one-day workshop is implemented in the framework of the project “Greek Cogitation Colloquia: Expreriential Learning Programs” which is co-financed by European Social Fund and National funds through the Operational Programme Education and Lifelong Learning. The project aims at life-long learning of all people through a wide range of experiential activities, opening new ways of thinking and reflecting issues of global and enduring interest, focusing on the Greek way of thinking and the geographic location of “Plato`s Academy”.

The project “Greek Cogitation Colloquia: Experiential Learning Programs” has been designed by the Cultural Foundation Alexander S. Onassis and is implemented in collaboration with the National University of Athens` as a “project in progress and in motion”. Leading thinkers, scholars, scientists, artists and intellectuals from around the world will participate in public conferences, debates, educational activities, training programs, workshops and experiential learning programs.

Experiential learning programs include the following actions:

(A) Words and Thoughts
(B) Visual Dialogues
(C) Workshops
(D) Parallel activities

and appeal mainly to adults (teachers, scholars, students and general public). The duration of the program is 24 months, will be implemented throughout three years (2012-2014) and will culminate in 2013 (European Year of Plato).

The Workshops’ Experiential Learning Program consists of a series of actions, where the Greek way of thinking is inherent to contemporary realities and new media. The implemented workshops are designed to familiarize participants with concepts of Greek cogitation and Greek philosophy in a way that relates to the modern currents of intellectual and artistic creation. The ultimate goal of these workshops is to explore in depth through original outlook of the general topic “Τoday’s responsibilities, tomorrow’s challenges”.

ΑΩ Magazine No 47-March 2010
ΑΩ Magazine No 48-June 2010
ΑΩ Magazine No 49-September 2010
19 10 2010 Eleftheros Typos
19 10 2010 To Ethnos
19 10 2010 Adesmeftos Typos
19 10 2010 To Vima
19 10 2010 Ta Nea
19 10 2010 H Kathimerini
19 10 2010 Eleftherotypia
28 10 2010 Epikairotita
28 10 2010 Athinorama
28 10 2010 24 Ores
01 11 2010 Ta Nea tis Texnis
01 11 2010 Status
01 11 2010 Eleftherotypia
03 11 2010 Estia
13 11 2010 Ta Nea
16 11 2010 Metro
19 11 2010 Ta Nea
19 11 2010 Radiotileorasi
21 11 2010 To Vima tis Kyriakis
21 11 2010b To Vima tis Kyriakis
21 11 2010c To Vima tis Kyriakis
21 11 2010d To Vima tis Kyriakis
21 11 2010e To Vima tis Kyriakis
21 11 2010f To Vima tis Kyriakis
21 11 2010 H Kathimerini tis Kyriakis-Texnes
21 11 2010 Free Sunday
23 11 10 Collection of Articles
24 11 10 Collection of Articles
24 11 10 b Collection of Articles
25 11 10 Collection of Articles
26 11 10 Collection of Articles
27 11 10b Collection of Articles
27 11 10 Collection of Articles
28 11 10 Collection of Articles
29 11 10 Collection of Articles
30 11 10 Collection of Articles
03 12 10 Collection of Articles
04 12 10 Collection of Articles
05 12 10 Collection of Articles
ΑΩ Magazine No 50-December 2010

The Athens Dialogues were held on November 24-27 and brought leading academics, researchers and intellectuals to Greece from around the world to engage in an open, public, multifaceted and creative dialogue on the ways in which Greek thought can contribute to the solution of the problems facing contemporary humanity, and on the place of Greek civilization in the societies of today. The Dialogues were conceived of and implemented as an interdisciplinary and diachronic event, which is how 80 distinguished speakers came to discuss a host of questions from different academic perspectives, and to come up with answers relating to contemporary problems like democracy and governance, identity and difference, quality of life, science and ethics, word and art, stories and histories.

The symposium was attended by over 1,700 people at the Onassis Cultural Centre itself, while another 11,000 watched proceedings unfold online as individuals users. The conference’s live Web-link was visited 55,000 times over the four days, while the event was also relayed over the Internet in real time to 50 universities, museums and other venues around the world, from Mexico and Vancouver to Paris and the most far-flung corners of Greece.

Furthermore, over 1,500 written questions were received from the public—real and virtual—via e-mail, facebook and twitter, a significant number of which reached the section chairs, who incorporated them into the dialogues. The questions that remain unanswered will be posted online and addressed in the ongoing electronic dialogue.

During the symposium’s opening session, the President of the Organizing Committee, Professor George Babiniotis, explained just how innovative the Onassis Foundation had been in organizing a conference of this sort, and how important its fresh and interdisciplinary approach to the most pressing issues of contemporary humanity is as a means of transcending the fragmentation of knowledge which is now the norm.

The closing session attempted a synthetic evaluation of the issues posed during the conference, with a constructive dialogue between the chairpersons of the thematic sections which also featured the participation of the celebrated philosopher and intellectual, Simon Critchley, on the prospects opening up for the future.

As the President of the Onassis Foundation, Dr Anthony S. Papadimitriou, whose personal vision the symposium is, said in his closing address, the Athens Dialogues surpassed its organizers’ expectations and will be repeated in the future.

Dr Papadimitriou also said that: “the conference was a genuine success because it focused on the present and the future and not the past. That was the goal of the Athens Dialogues in 2010, and that will be the goal of the next Dialogues which—since as so many people have remarked, the Athens Dialogues could be called an Olympic Games for the intellect—will be held in four years’ time and focus on “Greek civilization in an open dialogue with other cultures”. This symposium succeeded, because it put the Internet to creative use, not as a source of information but as a means of networking academics involved with Greek culture, and of allowing literally thousands of people around the world to take an active part in its proceedings. Another reason we consider the Dialogues a success is that they successfully involved the different generations in an active and creative dialogue”.

Download the press release [pdf]

The service will be available during the days of the conference (from 24/11 to 27/11) at www.athensdialogues.org, www.sgt.gr and www.onassis.gr