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
On May 29, 2025, the seminar series titled Cross-Cultural Approaches to Desirable AI received the AI ELSI Award (Perspective Division) from the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence (JSAI).
30. June / 01. July 2025 at Center for Science and Thought, University of Bonn
How and why is the relationship between freedom and unfreedom changing in our technologized present? And what visions of the future can we imagine through feminist approaches?
We will explore these questions over the course of the symposium Technological Futures Now: Racism, Imperialism, and the Surrogate Human Effect (June 30/ July 1 at CST, University of Bonn) together with Visiting Professors Neda Atanasoski and Kalindi Vora and international guest speakers (Nishant Shah, Erin McElroy and others, tba).
The Tucano project has won 1st place in the Most Interesting Results Competition at Bonn University's High Performance Computing (HPC) services. The competition occurred during the 1st anniversary event of Marvin, the university’s state-of-the-art Tier 3 HPC cluster, where researchers gathered to showcase their work powered by Marvin’s computational capabilities. Tucano, a series of natively pre-trained large language models for Portuguese, is fully open-source and was developed at the University of Bonn with the support of Marvin.
Here you can find additional news6.
Events of the CST
June 30 & July 01 2025 @CST
This two-day symposium takes Surrogate Humanity: Race, Robots, and the Politics of Technological Futures by Kalindi Vora and Neda Atanasoski as a generative starting point for urgent feminist and antiracist conversations about technology in our current moment. Central to the book are the concepts of the surrogate human effect and technoliberalism, which together diagnose how liberal promises of freedom are sustained through conditions of structural unfreedom. While technology may not directly cause unfreedom, it automates, scales up and accelerates the reproduction of racial, gendered, and colonial hierarchies through its entwinement with global capitalism, militarism, and empire. The symposium aims to probe how these insights might guide historical and contemporary approaches to the accelerating integration of AI, robotics, and algorithmic systems into a variety of geopolitical milieus.
July 1, 2025 @CST
A workshop hosted by Feminist AI Network as part of the Technological Futures Now Conference held at CST.
Neda Atanasoski will present her new book she edited with Nassim Parvin: Technocreep and the Politics of Things not Seen.
Mercator Lecture for AI in the Human Context / June 16 / 5.15 pm / CST
Visiting Professor Shoukei Matsumoto
As artificial intelligence increasingly shapes human experiences and interactions, our conventional anthropocentric perspective faces profound challenges. This lecture explores how Buddhist philosophy, particularly its non-dualistic view of life and interconnectedness, offers valuable insights for transcending human-centered thinking. By engaging in a dialogue between Buddhism and posthumanist perspectives, we can cultivate a new kind of human literacy—one that embraces coexistence and interdependence with AI and the broader ecological system.
Here you can find more events9.
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.
The 'Towards New Demarcation Criteria for Borderline Consciousness' Project is an interdisciplinary project involving a collaboration between philosophers of Bonn and Cambridge and neuroscientists from the epilepsy clinic in Bonn. Its main purpose is to create an international research forum to develop new criteria for determining whether and when non-human entities, such as non-linguistic animals, new brain organisms, or advanced AI systems can be considered conscious.
You can find more information about our research projects here.13
Links
- https://www.cst.uni-bonn.de/en/home/what_is_the_cst
- https://www.cst.uni-bonn.de/en/home/how-to-find-us.pdf
- https://www.cst.uni-bonn.de/en/en_news/seminar-series-cross-cultural-approaches-to-desirable-ai-receives-ai-elsi-award-perspective-division-from-the-japanese-society-for-artificial-intelligence
- https://www.cst.uni-bonn.de/en/events/technological-futurs-now-racism-imperialism-and-the-surrogate-human-effect
- https://www.cst.uni-bonn.de/en/en_news/tucano-projekt-gewinnt-1-platz-in-der-most-interesting-results-competition
- https://www.cst.uni-bonn.de/en/en_news/press-releases-1
- https://www.cst.uni-bonn.de/en/events/vorlage_newsseite
- https://www.cst.uni-bonn.de/en/events/human-literacy-in-the-age-of-ai
- https://www.cst.uni-bonn.de/en/events
- https://www.cst.uni-bonn.de/en/research/certified-ai
- https://www.cst.uni-bonn.de/en/research/desirable_digitalisation
- https://www.cst.uni-bonn.de/en/research/borderline_consciousness
- https://www.cst.uni-bonn.de/en/research
- https://www.cst.uni-bonn.de/en/events/2022-summer-program-of-the-ai-research-group
- https://www.cst.uni-bonn.de/en/research/publications
- https://listen.uni-bonn.de/wws/info/philosophy_and_ai