Ghent University and VUB are celebrating Leo Apostel’s centenary with a two-day event:
Thursday, 4 September 2025 - Join us at the Belvedere of Ghent University’s Boekentoren for a retrospective of his life and work.
Friday, 5 September 2025 - We will highlight current research at the Center Leo Apostel (CLEA) at the VUB.
Please note that registration is no longer possible.
About Leo Apostel
Leo Apostel (4 September 1925 - 10 August 1995) was a logician and philosopher. Academically he covered approximately all aspects of philosophy: ranging from logic and philosophy of science to developmental psychology and political philosophy to meaning and atheistic spirituality. There was always the input of the various relevant sciences, which also made him a pioneer of systems theory and other forms of synthetic thinking, such as developing worldviews. This calls for an interdisciplinary approach of which he has always been a great defender.
Apostel was known to the general public as a lecturer and author of books such as Broken Order, Freemasonry and Hopelessly Happy (with Jenny Walry). He died just before his seventieth birthday and left behind an intellectual legacy that continues to live on inside and outside academia.
Programme
Thursday 4 September 2025 - Ghent University (look here for more info)
Friday 5 September 2025 - VUB Brussels - Promotional room D.2.01, Pleinlaan 2, Ixelles
Programme 5 September:
- 10:00 Welcome by Karen Francois
- 10:15 Integrating Worldviews: a tool for making sense of life - Francis Heylighen
- 11:00 Coffee break
- 11:15 World Views, Hinges, Pluralism, and the epistemic risk of AI tools - Deniz Sarikaya
- 11:45 How to compare worldviews? - Clement Vidal
- 12:15 Lunch
- 13:30 Building Integrated Worldviews: An endeavor doomed to fail? - Karin Verelst
- 14:00 Between interdisciplinary science and pluralistic ethics: The worldviews concept reconsidered - Bart Van Kerkhove
- 14:30 Coffee break
- 14:50 A philosophical stance Leo Apostel shared with Albert Einstein: ‘Cosmic Spiritual Feeling’ - Ann Wyverkens
- 15:10 A personal testimony on logic, fallacies, and practical wisdom - Raymonda Verdyck
- 15:30 Coffee break
- 15:45 Quantum Statistical Structures in Human Language and Physics - Sandro Sozzo
- 16:30 Drinks
