Latest events
Practical info18/08/2026 - 13:00 - 19/08/2026 - 17:00Brussels Wittgenstein workshop
Hosted by CLEA–CLPS at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the inaugural Brussels Wittgenstein Workshop brings together young and emerging scholars working on different aspects of Wittgenstein's philosophy.
Practical info10/07/2026 - 14:30 - 10/07/2026 - 15:30CLEA Seminar - The Role of Geometric Intuitions for a Curved-Space Price Theory - by Esteban Céspedes
This seminar logically justifies applying physical models to economics through general price theory. Exploring network density and geometric novelty, it connects analogical reasoning directly to manifestations of enduring institutional robustness.
Practical info23/06/2026 - 16:00 - 23/06/2026 - 18:00CLEA Seminar. The Tree of Knowledge and a New Worldview for the 21st Century - by Gregg & Marcia Henriques
The Enlightenment gave humanity modern science, but left unresolved how to integrate objective knowledge with consciousness, culture, and meaning. This talk introduces the Tree of Knowledge System — a framework developed by Dr. Gregg Henriques of James Madison University that organizes reality into four planes of existence and bridges the natural and social sciences through a unified theory of mind and culture. Dr. Henriques is joined by independent UTOK scholar Marcia Henriques, MA, as they outline how this new worldview addresses the "Enlightenment Gap" for the 21st century.
Practical info26/06/2026 - 10:00 - 26/06/2026 - 17:00Noosphere Lab: A One-Day Public Experiment in Collective Thinking
Practical info28/05/2026 - 16:00 - 28/05/2026 - 17:00CLEA SEMINAR. ENHANCED CAUSAL MATHEMATICAL REASONING IN HUMANS AND LARGE LANGUAGE MODELS - BY LIUBOV TUPIKINA
Large language models excel at many reasoning tasks but still struggle to reliably distinguish causation from correlation. This talk examines how decoding strategies can be refined to improve causal reasoning, drawing inspiration from how humans tackle complex problems — such as Olympiad-level mathematics. The speaker will present a framework that introduces structured signals during decoding to help models isolate relevant causal factors, and will discuss why simply generating longer reasoning traces is insufficient for genuine causal understanding.
Practical info26/02/2026 - 16:00 - 26/02/2026 - 17:00CONSTITUTIONAL AI: EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FOR SELF-CORRECTING GOVERNANCE SYSTEMS - BY CARLOS ARLEO
In this presentation, Carlos Arleo challenges the industry standard of AI alignment, arguing that current methods—which treat safety as a behavioral training problem—only produce superficial conformity. Here, he presents empirical validation of aitiopoietic cognition from constitutional physics through the Wisdom Forming Function, a paradigm shift from training AI to behave correctly toward alignment-by-architecture, where constitutional compliance is a fundamental requirement for the system’s computational existence.
NEW LARGE RESEARCH GROUP CLEA-CLPS
From 2024, the VUB research centres CLEA and CLPS (Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science) have been integrated into a large research group, called CLEA. Prof. Karen François was appointed general director, while former CLEA head Prof. Francis Heylighen became research director. You can consult the entire new directing team here. While initially, both CLEA and CLEA-CLPS have continued to communicate through their existing channels, both are now gradually being integrated here. Meanwhile, the story of CLPS up to the merger remains available on its old website.
WHO ARE WE?
The Centre Leo Apostel (CLEA) is a transdisciplinary research centre at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). CLEA’s mission is to bridge the different scientific, social and cultural disciplines. It was founded as in interfaculty unit in 1995 under the impulse of the Belgian philosopher Leo Apostel (1925-1995), who formulated its goal as the integration of the different disciplines into a coherent worldview, so as to counteract the current fragmentation into ever more specialized approaches. Next to worldviews, our research has addressed fundamental interdisciplinary issues, including complexity, systems, evolution, quantum entanglement, cognition, artscience and well-being.
CLEA's research philosophy is "thinking beyond boundaries". Thanks to this, it has attracted and trained a large number of talented researchers from the humanities, social sciences, physical sciences and engineering, representing countries from across the globe. CLEA is now internationally recognized as a unique, transdisciplinary research centre with a steady output of high-level, innovative publications. Next to research, CLEA offers diverse educational programs and activities, including an interdisciplinary PhD, the School of Thinking postgraduate, courses, and public seminars and lecture series.
The Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science (CLPS) was founded in 1998 by its first director Jean Paul Van Bendegem as a research unit within the Philosophy Department of the Faculty of Humanities and Languages. Research within CLPS has been mainly organized around two clusters: one on the development of a descriptive, empirically informed, philosophy of mathematics or "philosophy of mathematical practices", and one on the history and philosophy of early modern science and scientific method (with a particular focus on Newton's work and legacy). The interdisciplinary nature of much of this work has lended plausibility to the CLEA-CLPS merger, seeking reinforcement through enhanced intellectual exchange.
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School of Thinking: Open-door session, Monday 8 September, 2025
Final weeks! As the 2025–2026 academic year approaches, we would like to put the School of Thinking Edition Tau back on your summer radar.
