Conference 2008

Subject, Self, and Soul:
Transdisciplinary Approaches to Personhood 

July 13 – 17, 2008

MIHI QUAESTIO FACTUS SUM
(I have become a question to myself.)

Augustini Confessiones (liber X, caput xxxiii)

Who are we?  Why are we here?  In our age, it is science that purports to answer these ancient questions, while technology promises to make us even “more than human.”  But despite our amazing scientific discoveries and technological powers, are we not still “a question to ourselves?”  And what new questions about ourselves have been raised in our own times?

If we are truly to understand ourselves, our place in the cosmos, and our relation to each other and to the divine, we must adopt rich transdisciplinary approaches that cut across fields of knowledge, institutional boundaries, cultural borders, and religious traditions.

At the 9th annual Metanexus Conference philosophers, biologists, physicists, cosmologists, neuroscientists, cognitive scientists, theologians, religious scholars and community leaders, historians and educators discussed these and other profound questions of what it means to be a person in a rapidly evolving and complex world.

Among the attendees were more than 200 representatives of the Metanexus Global Network of multidisciplinary Local Societies from over 40 countries.