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
Congratulations to Dr. Chelsea Haramia, Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Science and Thought (CST) at the University of Bonn, who was appointed Co-Director of the newly established Discovery and Futures Lab at the SETI Institute earlier this year
The Mercator Lectures are organised as part of the ‘Desirable Digitalization: Rethinking AI for Just and Sustainable Futures’ research project, a collaboration between the Universities of Bonn and Cambridge, funded by Stiftung Mercator. In these lectures, the respective Mercator Visiting Professors give an insight into their work and current issues in the research of desirable AI and digitization.
Here you can find additional news.
Events of the CST
July 01, 2026 @ CST
This talk by Professor Robin R. Wang introduces the Dui–Tong Problem—the divergence between correctness (對dui) and relational responsiveness (通tong).
You are welcome to join us digitally or in person.
More Information
We are organising a workshop on the topic of the normativity of AI systems. The workshop brings together scholars working from a range of philosophical perspectives – including philosophy of language, social philosophy, philosophy of technology, and neo-Aristotelian philosophy. Through talks and critical discussions across traditions and methodologies, we hope to shed light on what the normativity of AI is, what it is not, and why these distinctions matter for philosophy and society alike.
June 22, 2026 @HVK
As part of the Philo-Lounge, organised by the Fachschaft Philosophie, Victor Weisbrodwill lead a workshop series on Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s work Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944/1969).
The workshop series will take place in German. Everyone is warmly welcome. No registration is required.
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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