Third culture at Kosmopolis
Literature at the centre of the scene in interaction with the arts and the sciences
Since its first editions the festival has tackled the third culture and has presented figures ranging from John Brockman, one of the main activators of the third culture in the 21st century, to great scientists, writers and communicators such as Martine Bosman, Sònia Fernández-Vidal, Theodor Holm Nelson, Hope Jahren, Stefano Mancuso, Carl Safina, Lee Smolin, Ricard Solé and Robert Trivers.
Kosmopolis 05. The New Humanists. Science at the Edge
Debate with Marc Hauser, Lee Smolin, Robert Trivers and John Brockman
Charles Darwin's ideas on evolution through natural selection are the basis for these arguments. This talk gives the opportunity to a physicist, a cognitive neuroscientist, and an evolutionary biologist to explain how the common thread of Darwinian evolution has led them to new advances in ...
Kosmopolis 13. The Genome: A Literary Language?
Debate with Pau Vidal, Ricard Solé and Roderic Guigó
Carl Safina
Can We Know What Animals Think and Feel?
Consciousness, self-awareness, empathy, non-verbal communication, imitation, teaching, grief. Many animals think and feel a lot like people do; after all, people are animals. Carl Safina shows that in some surprising ways non-human minds aren’t really too different from ours. They know ...
Hope Jahren
Be as a Tree Planted by the Waters: The Magic of Roots, Leaves, and Everything in Between
Trees are the oldest, biggest, and most successful creatures in the world. Using energy from the sun, and carbon from the air, they have thrived on land for more than four hundred million years. Hear about the amazing and unique methods that plants around us use to establish, grow, flourish, ...
Stefano Mancuso
The Roots of the Intelligence of Plants
Plants behave in curiously intelligent ways: they fight against predators, maximise opportunities for food, and have more senses than we can imagine. How should our ideas about the plant world and its function in the fabric of life change? Italian neurobiologist Stefano Mancuso presents some ...
Kosmopolis 04. The Future of Electronic Literature
Lecture by Theodor Holm Nelson
Current electronic documents and the hierarchical structure implicit in them have been restricted by different traditions. For Theodor Holm Nelson, creator of the Xanadu Project, this is a situation that has to be altered. Nelson predicts a future of many alternative documentary structures ...