Welcome to the Center for Science and Thought
The Center for Science and Thought (CST) is a radically interdisciplinary platform designed to address urgent questions that arise at the intersection of philosophy and various natural sciences.
The CST is located at Konrad-Zuse-Platz 1-3, 53227 Bonn.
Current News of the CST
Ana Ilievska’s edited volume on Humanism in the Age of AI: Ethics, Aesthetics, and Social Critique (transcript Verlag, 2026) has now been published electronically. It explores the fundamental question: What does it mean to speak of »the human« today, when it is increasingly invoked in the design, deployment, and regulation of artificial intelligence?
More Information
A conference exploring how different ‘schools’ of philosophy of technology interpret and respond to Artificial Intelligence. It invites contributions that approach Artificial Intelligence from within the philosophy of technology and reflect on how AI reopens fundamental questions of technics and technology across different traditions, conceptual transitions, and philosophical tensions.
Submission deadline: April 30, 2026
We are looking for a Student Assistant (m/f/d) for 10 hours per week
Starting date: as soon as possible
Application Deadline: 26.04.2026
Here you can find additional news.
Events of the CST
First Session: June 11 @ IZPH
Please see our website for the remaining session dates.
We are pleased to announce a new reading group on the Daodejing, led by Robin R. Wang, taking place throughout June and July. Wang is Professor of Philosophy at Loyola Marymount University, an internationally renowned scholar of Daoist and Comparative Philosophy, and currently a Mercator Visiting Professor at the Center for Science and Thought at the University of Bonn.
The reading group offers a space for a slow and collaborative engagement with the Daodejing. Open discussion, reflection, and diverse interpretations of the text will be at the center of the sessions. No prior knowledge is required, and all interested participants are warmly welcome.
June 02, 2026 @ CST
Large language models have brought AI closer than ever to passing the Turing Test, yet true language understanding may still be far away. In this talk, Monojit Choudhury argues that language is not a generic human capability, but a reflection of individual experience, culture, and interaction. He proposes a new vision — “Turing Test 2.0” — where AI is evaluated not by imitating an average human, but by its ability to model specific individuals. This perspective opens new possibilities for understanding intelligence, generalization, and human-centered AI applications in education, therapy, and social science.
We are initiating a new online series, AI at a Crossroads. The aim of this series is to bring underrepresented issues around AI into mainstream discourse and incorporate them into our desired vision of AI. Recent developments in AI have already encroached upon various facets of human life, and reflecting on such intrusions into domains that were once exclusively human is more pressing than ever. In this endeavor, the online series will be organized jointly with the Center for Science and Thought, University of Bonn; the Department of Philosophy, Universidade de Brasília, Brazil; the Human Sciences Research Centre, IIIT Hyderabad, India; the Institute of Philosophy and Technology, Athens, Greece; and the Department of Philosophy, Lakshmibai College, University of Delhi.
Here you can find more events.
Research of the CST
The aim of the project is to develop procedures to examine generally accepted standards for AI systems and their verification, as well as to explore business models for an AI certification. Our research investigates the ethical-philosophical significance of these dimensions.
Rethinking AI for Just and Sustainable Futures.
We investigate how to design AI (artificial intelligence) and other digital technologies in a responsible way, placing the questions of social justice and environmental sustainability at the very heart of our work.
Our research program is a collaboration between the Universities of Cambridge and Bonn and numerous international partners, and is funded by the Mercator Foundation in Germany.
Polyglot: Developing Open Source Foundation Models for Low-Resource Languages
Polyglot is an initiative to close the linguistic divide in NLP by developing efficient and accessible foundation models for low-resource languages.
Polyglot is a project funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (MWK) as part of TRA Sustainable Futures (University of Bonn) and the Excellence Strategy of the federal and state governments.
You can find more information about our research projects here.
We connect female* students, scientists at all career levels as well as employees from technology and administration who research and work in various disciplines on artificial intelligence (AI) at the University of Bonn.
Our goal is to bring women* at the University of Bonn together, increase their visibility and engage in a critical exchange about AI. As a female* network, “Feminist AI” supports the interdisciplinary dialog on artificial intelligence and contributes to the strengthening of female* researchers at the University of Bonn.
The network is supported by the Equal Opportunities Office of the University of Bonn with funds from the Fund for the Promotion of the Structural Anchoring of Gender Equality.
You can find a selection of publications here.
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