International Interdisciplinary Conference: Invention and Imagination (Event)

Activity: MembershipMembership of committee

Description

In the sciences as in techniques, in the arts as in literature, invention seems to be inseparable from the possibility of making evident new connections, images, knowledge or procedures through an original combination of available means for a determined end. There is invention when previously unknown combinations are led to the identity of a defined and desired project, which usually allows the resolution of problems. In this sense, if we can easily admit that invention supposes the discovery of newly isolated data interpreted from the point of view of available models or procedures, it is equally simple to admit that a new discovery (whether scientific, technical or cultural - accepting that these fields are interconnected and express the same original dynamism) supposes the invention of forms that allow the perception of a datum that had not been noticed beforehand or whose potentiality had not been welcomed or imagined.

But how are images, imagination and invention related? What relation do they have to innovation, novelty, creation and creativity? What is the role of coincidences, inspiration or dreams in inventive processes? How essential are they to what is innovative in the very dynamism of the living subjects that we are? How are imagination and invention inscribed in the becoming of the cultural and political environment in which we live? To what extent can the invention of humanity endanger human life? Does the process of creation and invention have an immanent imaginary dynamic, in which subjects participate, or can subjectivities intentionally give rise to new images?

Focusing on philosophy and the history of ideas, the aim of this conference was to shed light on these and other questions related to the nature of imagination and invention through an interdisciplinary reflection.
There was an open international call and there were seven invited keynote speakers:

Vincent Bontems, CEA, France
António Bracinha Vieira, Center for the Philosophy of Science, University of Lisbon
Richard Kearney, Boston College, USA
Maria Filomena Molder, IFILNOVA- NOVA University of Lisbon
Olga Pombo, Center for the Philosophy of Sciences of the University of Lisbon
Yulia Ustinova, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel
Elliot Wolfson, University of California Santa Barbara, USA

The Scientific Committee evaluated more than eighty proposals and there were more than sixty communications in four languages (english, french, spanish and portuguese).

The program and the abstract book of the event are available at:

https://cham.fcsh.unl.pt/actividades-detalhe.php?p=2386
Period14 Dec 202316 Dec 2023
Event titleInternational Interdisciplinary Conference: Invention and Imagination
Event typeConference
LocationLisboa, PortugalShow on map
Degree of RecognitionInternational