Dialogue & ex/CHANGE

INTERVIEW WITH HELGA NOWOTNY	by Hans Ulrich Obrist
1. Commençons par le commencement, where did your interdisciplinary research begin? Probably a very long time ago, biographically speaking. I have always lived in more than one world, and so to a certain extent a pluralistic perspective emerges of its own accord. And also, a single discipline was not enough for me even when I was at college. Besides, I'd always been interested in what there is 'between' and 'behind' things. Intermediates shades and ambivalences are part of social life, of every conversation. They are the way into a different world each time. And yet clarity is very important to me. But it only comes into being in a process of getting to know each other, of positioning that is always relational, and always includes the other position within it. I have also always been fascinated by what lies on the other side of a boundary. I still can't accept boundaries - I find them arbitrary, authoritarian and negative. I see them as a positive invitation to cross over them, undermine them or walk around them. In short, biographically speaking I feel good when I can be open and curious in a lot of directions. I am also profoundly suspicious of the idea of having reached a 'final' position, insight or attitude. I like incomplete processes because they leave a lot of possibilities open. 2. In your new book "Es ist so. Es könnte auch anders sein" (It is like this. It could also be different) you talk about pluri- (multi-disciplinarity, interdisicplinarity, transdisciplinarity. What do these three concepts have in common, and what differences are there between them? Are pluri- and interdisciplinarity steps on the way to transdisciplinarity? Of course there are many examples, like for example the emergence of molecular biology, that show how pluri- or interdisciplinary co-operation can develop any independent discipline. But there are even more attempts to bring order into the concepts that you have mentioned by classification and definition. But ultimately these attempts do not seem to be very fruitful, as the scientific or artistic practices that are the object of these attempts to impose order are always a long way ahead in their development and ability to change. And so attempts at definition limp behind. There is also no prescribed way, no stepladder that has to be climbed to arrive at transdisciplinarity. For me, 'inter'disciplinarity conjures up the image of bridges between islands. The island are in a fixed position, and as is well known, bridges can be built and demolished. Interdisciplinarity emphasizes the 'sovereignty' of the disciplines involved. As in the case of states that are concerned about their sovereignty, mutual accords can be concluded for anything possible, but that is the end of it, as a rule. For me,transdisciplinarity contains the kernel of the idea of crossing boundaries. Here researchers no longer behave like the representatives of states. They are more like NGOs, non-governmental organizations that join up with each other because they have common aims and are active everywhere they think they can make a contribution to achieving these goals. 3. The Paris urbanist Yona Friedmann said to me in an interview last week that he avoids concepts like trans- and interdisciplinarity as they carry the germ of a disciplinary approach within themselves. He replaces these concepts with globalism, global action, global thinking, thinking in global contexts. How do you see this set of definition problems? I understand people's reluctance to pin themselves down to fixed definitions. That's why we have gone over to saying that changes in the way in which knowledge is produced today are shifting from mode 1 to mode 2. Thus we should avoid associations that are too different, or over-hasty emotional terms like 'for' or 'against', 'good' or 'bad'. But I have a different problem with the global nature of thought or knowledge that you have mentioned. Knowing, thinking and acting are overwhelmingly local for me, and not global. Globality only becomes possible when many practices deriving from a variety of local contexts work together to produce knowledge. This way of looking at things, which has become accepted in the history of science and in scientific research in recent years, also allows us to keep the variety and distinctiveness that are the characteristics of local thought, knowledge and action while globality has a much more marked tendency towards homogeneity and levelling. Former generations of scientists (the women among them were the exception) still dreamed of the unity of knowledge and the standardization of science; today we see incredible diversity and ranges of difference in the way in which scientific knowledge emerges, the way science is organized and how it works. Something - to name just one example - that is accepted as scientific proof in one discipline or one area of research is completely irrelevant in a different area, because here other criteria are applied to establish whether something can be considered 'proved'. I see this rejection of the unattainable ideal of a Great Unity as a positive development, not least because fits in better with our world's development towards pluricultural diversity. 4. How can we reduce the danger that thinking that is not subject to global discipline will level down the vocabulary between the disciplines. How do we avoid interdisciplinarity leading to conformity of vocabulary and complex discourse being simplified within a discipline.? Where do you see concrete possibilities of linking centrifugal and centripetal aspects of knowledge so that highly complex questions are discussed beyond the boundaries of a particular discipline? Meeting through separation? Separation through meeting? Dynamic cohesion patterns and not static syntheses? In the 30s the Polish medical researcher and scientific theorist Ludwig Fleck developed views, revolutionary in his day, of a "thought collective", within which all scientific knowledge would be developed. Thomas Kuhn, whose 'structure of scientific revolution' brought the concept of the paradigm into general usage is actually a follower of Fleck. Fleck also concerned himself in detail with what happens when ideas and theories, but also conjectures and opinions are exchanged between different thought collectives. He shows that when there is 'circulation' of this kind there will always be changes in the content of these ideas or theories as the content of concepts or theories changes when they are introduced into a different social context and 'thought style'. I still find that it is an exciting idea to pursue these migrant movements of ideas, concepts or theories. We are organizing a seminar at the moment in the Collegium Helveticum at the ETH Zurich in which we want to reconstruct everything that changes when the concept of "complexity" leaves physics and settles in economics, population biology or town planning. To do this it is necessary on the one hand to find out how to understand the special effective force of the concept and the way it operates better, through mathematical models, for instance, but also to recognize the limits of what it can deliver. On the other hand, we can learn a great deal about how new questions arise in a different context. 'Concepts travel' much more by aligning themselves with different conditions - we gain insights into a particular form of scientific credibility, (self) organized through key ideas and concepts, through a set of methodological instruments, but also through the "thought collectives" involved and the questions that concern them. 5. A few weeks ago I asked Ilya Prigogine about interdisciplinarity. He talks about the reconciliation of disciplines" "J'ai toujours trouvé que mon oeuvre était une oeuvre de réconciliation. Cela provient d'un sentiment d'insatisfaction très ancien. Quand j'étais jeune je m'intéressais beaucoup à la philosophie, et pour la philosophie, le temps est un temps irreversible, la flèche du temps et la condition même du savoir, parce que c'est changer, se renouveler... Tandis que pour les physiciens, le temps apparaissait dans des théories déterministes dans lesquelles il n'y a pas d'événements. Il n'y a qu'une continuité du temps, une continuité du temps en mécanique classique, en mécanique quantique, en rélativité. Au fond j'ai senti ce problème depuis que j'étais presque adolescent." Bergson a séparé le savoir métaphysique qui correspondait à l'expérience du réel, et un savoir physique qui était répétitif et déterministe. Au fond, ce que j'ai essayé de faire, c'est de réunir les deux savoir. Donc j'ai supprimé le gouffre qui separait la métaphysique de la physique, mais à condition de montrer qu'au fond le concept fondamental de la physique était l'Etre et en philosophie c'etait toujours la discussion entre l'Etre et le Devenir. C'est déjà la discussion entre Parmélide et Héraclite. J'ai supprimé la contradiction entre l'art/création et la nature/statique. C'est une contradiction que j'ai trouvée toujours très arbitraire et même fausse. La nature est aussi création, et comme j'avais rencontré la création dans les systèmes joints de l'équilibre, une forme de transition de nouveaux états de complexité, alors je voulais rattacher ces choses et enlever la contradiction. I agree entirely with Ilya Prigogine. But a great many more 'contradictions' and "/" have to be resolved. We find it difficult not to make unambiguous allocations, as we think we always have to operate with logical criteria of exclusion. In the European traditions , we carry a great load of dualisms of all kinds, and these like to sneak in again through the back door, especially when we think they have already been resolved. This may have been justifiable at a time when people were wanting to create logical and scientific systems of order that made a major contribution to understanding the world. But we have gone further today. We recognize when Prigogine explains that behind supposed contradictions there is another kind of common ground, but also a new set of differences. We also increasingly understand in our social lives that that it is no longer easy to keep very dominant concepts like "state", "market" or "culture" unambiguously distinct from each other. They have become transgressive. Rather than sticking to a dualistic world picture I would prefer to learn to think more in categories of processes and processual outcomes. Processes are always transgressive. 6. How important is the context of knowledge? Is dynamic knowledge situative to a greater extent? The context of knowledge is enormously important; it is crucial for the emergence of knowledge, the way it changes, its acceptance and its effective force. The contextualization of knowledge was rejected for a long time. This is because the natural sciences were looking for natural laws that could not be influenced by man and society, and it was rightly expected that these laws would contain the key to understanding nature. But this led to the unintended but not undesired side effect that they would also become the basis for legitimating the authority of science and for its demand for autonomy. Appealing to natural laws creates a legitimation that withdraws from social lawmaking and standardization by definition. And so from this point of view the authority of science is not society, it is not delegated, but it also derives directly from the fact that natural laws are being addressed. This is why many scientists are very certain that they have to be apolitical. Behind this lies the fear of social contamination that is still widespread among scientists. They are guarding something that I call the hard epistemological core. The argument runs that this core is immune to any social influence. It is context-insensitive. But what if this core turns out to be empty on closer analysis? Or what if it turns out to be excessively full, stuffed with very different, historically changing ideas and criteria about what is good science or can be seen as a 'soluble' problem? When the well-known physicist Steven Weinberg talks about this core - the unchangeable, ever-valid natural laws - then he introduces evaluation criteria like 'elegant' or 'simple' or other ideal notions that he goes on to use to judge these insights. But when reviewing Weinberg's 'Dream of a Final Theory', Phil Anderson, another well-known physicist, arrives at quite different assessments of where the simplicity, beauty or elegance of these theories lie. What this example shows is that even in a context-insensitive sphere of knowledge, colleagues use criteria when evaluating and judging that are anything but context-insensitive, but in fact highly context-dependent. And anyway there is a general consensus today that the fundamental laws of nature have been fully explored. It is essential to understand them to understand how the world is structured. But that is where their practical relevance ends. The dynamic of scientific development is located outside this field of relevance today. It is increasingly moving in the direction of greater context-sensitivity, towards accepting changes that have been and are being brought into this world by evolution and by man. The contextualization of scientific thought is thus a result of the success of science - but conversely it changes science irreversibly. 7A. How do you see changes in the production of knowledge brought about by the internet? Are the boundaries of the lab becoming more porous? To what extent do the channels of communication link the labs and the disciplines? When dramatic changes are taking place before our very eyes it is often difficult to look through them and to gain an insight. Everybody sees something, and what is seen is very partial. For this reason I believe that the internet's far-reaching effects on the production of knowledge cannot yet be fully assessed. There is no doubt that a lot of boundaries are becoming more porous. Thomas Friedman (The Lexus and the Olive Tree) talks about a three-fold process of democratization in this context: the democratization of technology, of information and of finance. Today completely different social groups are able to acquire information and knowledge. They also generate new knowledge. I sometimes think that a new syncretism is emerging in the field of knowledge and not just that of culture. On the other hand there is an increased tendency towards exclusion, and to dividing society into the fast and the slow. Lack of simultaneity then becomes the new inequality. But what seems to me to be the crucial question about the generation and distribution of knowledge in and through the electronic communications media will be the question of the quality of the knowledge: who checks it? Who guarantees the quality of the knowledge? How reliable and credible is it, and who decides that? The question is not insoluble - but new quality control mechanisms appropriate to the medium and what it contributes to the generation of knowledge are still a very long way away. 7B How do you see the changed tension, brought about by the internet revolution, between image/text, seeing/reading? There is no doubt that we are living in a visual or audio-visual culture today. I see how difficult my students find it to read texts. Perhaps "turning to the text" and interpreting the world as a text, as introduced by Postmodernism, was nothing other than a sign that the old text-reading culture is going to go under. But why should we not use other forms of sensual access to knowledge? 'Seeing' and the 'image' open up other creative spaces. Of course they cannot manage without language, as we have to talk about images and seeing in order to communicate what we are seeing or how we interpret the world of images. In science simulation and modelling (predominantly image-making and visually presented) have long become the most important medium for generating new knowledge, alongside theory and experiment. Part of the dynamic of knowledge production comes from these new techniques for presenting things visually. 8. You quote Lee Smolin, who talks about knowledge in a state of permanent transformation from knowledge that is evolutive rather than static. To what extent does the internet have a part to play in the emergence of self-organized, complex knowledge? Lee Smolin was one of the first people to address the question of whether natural laws are not in fact subject to evolution as well, i.e. they weren't just there 'from the beginning', and never change, but are subject to the self-organized process of evolution. It certainly is a big leap from cosmology to the internet, but we can see self-organizing processes at work everywhere today. So central perspective or the perspective of a "central observer" is thus becoming more frail - it has had its day. 9. "Ignorance, inertia, but mostly FEAR that we may be forced to giving up vested interests has kept us from pooling our knowledge, feelings and power" (Gyorgy Kepes, in the introduction to his Vision and Value Series, structure in art and science) The question I always ask myself is whether initiatives that go beyond the narrow boundaries of the disciplines can take place within the old structures (university, museum), given the general "fear of the interdisciplinary", as Kristeva describes it, or whether we need new structures to give the whole thing a boost? Where are the chances and starting-points for overcoming territorial fears? Territorial fear is most prevalent in the universities. And it is there that there will be the greatest number of tensions and conflicts in future about how the universities have to adjust to a rapidly changing environment. Innovations always take place on the fringes of established institutions, and the more fringes there are the more innovative impetus and initiatives there will be. But in the longer term this will also become a question of balance: interdisciplinarity or better - mode 2 - is not permitted to become parasitical. But back to the question of fear. Fear of losing power and privileges, of losing territory that is seen as one's own is definitely a motive that occurs and is recognizable everywhere, and that resists innovation. But fear goes much further, and if it is to be overcome, these layers have to be revealed as well. It is above all fear of losing one's own professional identity, and this is closely linked with self-identity. And behind the "fear of interdisciplinarity" there is also the fear of losing the firm support of (familiar, tried-and-tested?) security; no longer knowing how 'good' science should be judged. And so it is never just about power and influence (although they are both important), but also about what role identity plays. What can be done about fear? It should be named and then acknowledged, i.e., quite private, personal fear should be made recognizable for what it is in reality - a public phenomenon. Fear is widespread. And then, strengthen identity; show that there is not just one - immutable - identity, but that every one of us can have several identities - as scientists as well. 10. In your new book "Es ist so. Es könnte auch anders sein" you talk about changes in the production of knowledge. "In the transdisciplinarity mode, changes in knowledge production are taking place that contain fundamentally quite different responses to the explosion of knowledge we are experiencing than the responses provided by a linear and hierarchical understanding of knowledge that is restricted by disciplines." How would you define "mode 2" in this context? How does it differ from mode 1? Will mode 2 be followed by mode 3? Mode 1 is essentially the traditional organization of knowledge production by discipline, that is still strongly anchored in the universities. The disciplinary boundaries are clearly regulated and the scientific élite keeps a firm eye on them, and on applying quality control to knowledge. But mode 2 is heterogeneous - from the way the research teams are put together, the disciplinary origin of the researchers to the institutions from which they come. There often have to be negotiations about what 'good science' is and also what additional criteria should be adopted. To this extent, mode 2 is more reflexive than mode 1. But the most important difference is that in mode 2 the traditional, sequentially arranged division of labour no longer applies. In mode 2, problems are defined in the context of application. And as there are very many, very scattered, very different application contexts, local heterogeneity increases further. The production of knowledge is distributed throughout society. This means that work is predominantly transdisciplinary, and that the specific configurations of a research group in a particular application context will be followed by the reconfiguration of that context - with different components - in other application contexts. Mode 3 would probably mean that it is possible to show how increasing (local and heterogeneous) context-sensitivity for the generation of knowledge brings demonstrable changes not only in the matter of being open to society or including heterogeneous knowledge producers, but in that the problems and the setting of scientific priorities, but also the theoretical access points and the methods available for use, and other scientific instruments, are lastingly affected. I would hope that knowledge produced in this way is also 'better' - but that remains to be proved. Even though a start has been made, we have not really got as for as that in general. 11. What role is played by self-organization and complexity in mode 2 knowledge generation? Why is it so important that time is limited in inter/transdisciplinary work in mode 2? Is there a time limit (in its own right) for inter/transdisciplinarity? Self-organization is central to mode 2. Time limits - the research group breaks up and the members move into other groups and other configurations - are so important because it is the problem itself that determines work under mode 2 and also the choices made when putting the group together. When the problem is seen as completed or 'solved' then attention turns to another one - but in a different combination and also for a length of time that is codetermined by the problem to a large extent. To this extent transdisciplinarity as it emerges under mode 2 has a time limit in its own right. 12. How can mode 2 be taken into society by small research groups? The very essence of mode 2 is that knowledge production itself is distributed over the whole of society (and information and communications technology are powerful tools here). So there are an enormous number of these little groups spread around the place, perhaps even scattered. They all interact with what I have called the application context. In this way knowledge, but also knowledge production, is taken out into society - and to a certain extent it takes place in society, even if some of the work is done in a lab. It is part of a movement that you have called a diaspora. 13. You talk about the "arena in which the struggle for a new definition of the relationship between science and society is taking place _" Where is this arena? In the universities? In businesses? In our new book "Re-thinking Science: knowledge production in an age of uncertainty". Michael Gibbons, Peter Scott and I talk of the "agora" as the new public space that has to be created for the encounter between science and society. Agora is not exclusively market or state, and it is not defined exclusively economically or politically. It is open to the top and the bottom, to the inside and the outside. And the space in the agora is not only public. Private emotions, desires and wish-projections have their place here as well. There are interests of a variety of kinds and there is power, though admittedly it always has to legitimate itself. The agora is also not unstructured; there are institutions in this place, but there are social movements as well. There are enterprises and concerns and mobilization from below. There are the media. And above all there is room for negotiation and for the discussions associated with this. Thus agora is also an interchange zone for science and society. This last fact is new for the sciences in particular. They have to find the courage to go out in to the agora, but there is also something for them to discover there: that people have a place within scientific knowledge. And conversely this makes it permissible to ask what place scientific knowledge occupies in people's lives. 14. You mention the "numerous untidy interfaces that are developing between science and society." Where are these interfaces starting to show? Interfaces often start to show because of controversies. But many are visible already: when 'university' culture starts to adapt to industrial culture, but conversely, business culture also takes over the cultural practices of universities. Or when anthropologists are called into firms; not as management consultants, but to investigate latent conflicts. Interfaces also exist when clinical research, in genetics, for example, cannot seal itself off any longer but is confronted with the problems that occur when genetic advice is given in hospitals or doctors' practices, which in their turn reveal another interface with self-help organization set up by affected parties. I really do see the number of interfaces increasing like this, and the word untidy applies here to the fact that they no longer admit a clear distinction between knowing-deciding-acting. 15. In this context I also ask how participatory scientific models can also include non-scientists. Rupert Sheldrake told me in an interview that he is trying to restore the possibility of participatory science in peripheral areas that have been neglected by science. Participatory models that include non-scientists exist in various forms and gradations. A great deal of experimentation is going on about this at the moment: consensus conferences, public forums, the role of the media as mediation authorities, admitting lay people to scientific advisory committees and so on. It seems import to me to place such initiative and models on a continuous basis and not just to use them as a response to hot and controversial subjects. If participation is a goal, then it has to start at an early stage. In schools, for instance, when children can be given little 'research projects' to do that introduce them to scientific thinking and working. Not long ago a book called "The scientist in the crib" appeared. This does not deal mainly with how scientists observe and test babies as research objects, but it shows how small children learn to discover, explore and understand the world scientifically. In this sense we are all born scientists - the potential is available and must be encouraged. But participatory also means that science should finally allow the public to see the everyday world of its research practice. Claude Bernard once talked about how the science of his day only received the public in its bourgeois salon and never admitted them to the kitchen. Science should not only appear in public in its Sunday best, it should create a public image that is more appropriate to reality - and that also means letting the public into the kitchen. 16. In our last conversation you also stressed that time limits are important, but it is also important that groups should be kept relatively small. How does inter/transdisciplinary work function in your Zurich institute? (It would be wonderful if you could give a few concrete examples of how the institute works? We have managed to build up an inter- or transdisciplinary graduate institute at the ETH in Zurich that is something very special. It is now referred to as an 'important ETH experimental area'. We work with a small but select group of graduates who come to us for a year to work on their dissertations. A large number of disciplines are brought together here: natural scientists, but also arts graduates and even engineers. We create a stimulating atmosphere by promoting group discussion (for example, projects are presented, which also entails making them comprehensible to other disciplines, but they are also commented on by other disciplines, amended, and unexpected questions are asked). This means that the area in which one's own work is placed is a lot more clearly defined, you see why certain questions are addressed or certain methods used, and what effect this can have on related disciplines, for example. Invited guests help us with this process of making oneself understood, which involves breaking down things one perceives as self-explanatory, or making them explicit. The special feature of the Collegium Helveticum, as the group is known, is that we invite guests from scientific fields, but also from the worlds of literature and art. These people take part in seminars and are ready for informal exchanges of ideas. The exciting thing about this is that thematic strands start to form almost of their own accord, cutting right across specific fields and thus open to being developed from many different points of view. We're doing this at the moment with the concept of "complexity". Physics has a great deal to offer here, but so does our artist guest, who works in his own way. In the summer term we are going to look at "chronicity". Another theme is narrative. In this case we will discuss "story-telling - in literature and science" with a historian of biology and a writer. The members of the group will be encouraged to generate links with their own work and then we suddenly have something like a joint project to which everyone has contributed. And I can tell you: it works. In this way structures and ways of working build up of their own accord that are reminiscent of mode 2, but the concrete form and development are completely open. The presence of artistic and literary guests is also very stimulating, incidentally. We might learn how a poem is created - and how this differs from the way a scientific publication comes into being. Or we talk to a Ukrainian photographer about how he makes the invisible visible, or we might turn to a flow dynamics specialist to find out about turbulence and how to 'make it visible'. In this way we are trying to give a small group a unique experience that they can take with then wherever they go after their dissertation - a process of 'diaspora', in other words. But we also try to place the dialogue between science and the public on a continuous footing by inviting outstanding international scientists to symposia where they present and discuss their work with each other, but also before a mixed audience. This too is intended to provide insights into the specific form of creativity that is the basis of different ways of working and styles of thinking. Sometimes we move away from our academic venue and use a theatre, for example, as the location for our event. Our next move is to expand the field of research. This too is to happen through working with a small group that will be brought together in the stimulating environment of the Collegium Helveticum on a temporary basis to create a kind of mini-community. Incidentally, it is also important to know that we cook and eat together two days a week. The most pleasing thing about this is to see how quality standards rise of their own accord - for cooking and eating and for the scientific work. 17. "Es is so. Es könnte auch anders sein" also implies that given the fact that "science . . . has increasingly to assert itself in the face of utilitarian and instrumental and also of democratically legitimate calculations", there is a threat that scientific work might lose its relative autonomy. Hakim Bey speaks of the necessity for temporary autonomous cells. How could temporary autonomous cells of this kind be generated for knowledge? Science needs autonomous open spaces, but not only science. They are an essential requirement for any form of creative activity. Realistically, these open spaces also have to be defined relatively and temporarily. And they have to be constantly redefined. Scientific or artistic autonomy also has to be accountable and renegotiate its open spaces from time to time. In science this is above all about the field of pure research, a form of knowledge that has no direct implementation or application, no usefulness or relevance that is already apparent. And as a rule it is also not easy to assess how long it will take for something useful to emerge from it. Today pure research has almost become an endangered species in need of special protection because of enormous pressure to contribute to the economic competitiveness of a country. In future, universities will be under much more pressure to decide whether they should still offer mathematics or Latin, tibetology or nuclear physics. This may not be seen as anything new or as ground for particular agitation in the arts community, but for science it is a major blow. 18. The title "Es is so. Es könnte auch anders sein" evokes "the roads not taken". Is the book intended to stimulate addressing projects that have not been realized at the beginning of this century? The history of science and technology is full of roads that were not taken or roads that appeared not to get anywhere. And yet ideas, technical approaches, theoretical insights live on, and they are taken up again later, usually in different contexts and with different aims. But awareness that all these untaken roads are still there is a good vaccine against the anachronistic view that things can develop only like this and not like that, or that tries to measure past achievements by present standards and insights. Anachronism denies the fact that all knowledge is historically conditioned. We are protected against it by knowledge of the untaken roads, which also stops us from investing undue hope in eternal truths and immutable universal principles. The untaken roads remind us that everything could have been different - they teach us to be modest in the face of historical contingency. And they give us an idea of everything that has to come together if evolution and self-organization are to be able to proceed. That is why evolution takes such a long time, and why we have redundancy, the game of trial-and-error. It is a rejection of teleological thinking. 19. You quote Lorenz Krüger: "There are problems for which we have not yet found a discipline." Does this mean pre-disciplinary problems or limbo problems? Today I would add an amendment: "There are problems that will never find their discipline." They ask for an approach that makes an effective contribution to the solution, no matter what discipline is used. 20. What is the unrealized project that is most important to you? For me unrealized projects are largely projects that have not been realized yet. For humanity, I think that the most important unrealized project is to find ways and means, institutions and mechanisms, attitudes and social practices that will make us better able to handle aggression, violence and belligerent conflicts. This is not naïve optimism about progress, but shows the immense complexity that lies in humanity's understanding of itself, as manifested in the age of globalized insecurity that we have arrived in today. Personally the most important unrealized project is still the one I am working on at present. It sets the direction if the outcome is uncertain and I allow myself to be inspired by its dynamic. To quote Robert Musil: it is a movement that is supported by the sense of the possible. As a project, the Collegium Helveticum is still at a stage where we are plumbing and exploring the possibilities it can offer. When the sense of reality then takes over realization completely, it is time to turn to the next unrealized - not yet realized - project.