Research

Themes and research groups

While CLEA welcomes any innovative, boundary-crossing research and regularly explores new subjects, we of course have built up our most extensive expertise in topics that are close to our core mission of transdisciplinary integration. These topics, which define our main research “programs”, can be summarized as follows:

Integrating worldviews is CLEA's defining framework. Research aims at unifying results from all the sciences and humanities into an encompassing picture of human life in the cosmos: Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we going to? What is the meaning of life? This encompasses research in philosophy, “Big History” (history of life and the universe), cosmology, psychology of meaning and sense-making, and cultural anthropology of different worldviews.

Since our worldview is based on science, clarifying this worldview also requires clarifying the most fundamental, epistemological and ontological assumptions on which the different scientific theories and methods are based. We have in particular investigated the foundations of physics, cognitive science, systems theory and the theory of evolution. We publish two journals on these topics (see further).

The unifying principle underlying our worldview is that the universe has evolved step-by-step so as to produce ever more complex systems, from quantum fluctuations of the vacuum to elementary particles, atoms, molecules, networks of chemical reactions, primitive cells, and multicellular organisms, up to humans and socio-technological systems. These define levels of complexity that are superficially autonomous, but deeply connected by common principles. We call the emergence of a new level during evolution a “metasystem transition”.

We develop conceptual frameworks, mathematical models, and applied cases of phenomena where the reductionist or rationalist paradigm fails due to the systemic or seemingly irrational nature of the object of study. Of special interest are interdisciplinary phenomena with several entities and complex contextual interactions, such as metabolic and ecological systems, human-environment relations, socio-technological adaptations, and creativity-able systems. 

Another mechanism that connects seemingly independent phenomena into larger wholes is “entanglement”, a non-intuitive, mathematical concept that originates in quantum physics, but which we have been applying to a growing number of other domains: quantum logic, quantum computation, quantum cognition and most recently quantum information retrieval. CLEA researchers are considered pioneers in the application of quantum structures to explain cognitive phenomena such as concepts, decision-making, and perception.

The two research programs on entanglement and evolution of complexity come together in our research on intelligence: what does it mean to be an intelligent system? How can we become more intelligent? We investigate intelligence in all its forms and facets: individual, collective, artificial, and distributed intelligence (the combination of all the former). For example, we have done research on giftedness, the (anti) Flynn effect (secular increase in IQ), the possibilities and limitations of artificial general intelligence, and the processes of thinking.

We try to answer the worldview question “where are we going to?” by extrapolating the evolution of our present information society under the impact of ever more ubiquitous, powerful and intelligent ICT (Information and Communication Technologies). Our guiding metaphor is that the Internet will increasingly play the role of a distributed intelligence for humanity, i.e. a Global Brain. Thanks to a substantial donation from the Yuri Milner Foundation to promote this research, we were able to create a “Global Brain Institute” within the framework of CLEA.

The ArtScience research group is part of the Centre Leo Apostel for Transdisciplinary Studies (CLEA) at the Free University of Brussels (VUB). We aim at a synthesis of artistic and scientific methods for the creation of meaning, by producing works, performances and publications that integrate reason and intuition, subject and object, logic and imagination. In this, we continue CLEA’s long-standing project of bridging between the “two cultures”, as first expressed in the university-wide “Einstein meets Magritte” conference that CLEA organized in 1995.

The AIC Framework is a set of standardised commitments and requirements through which the systemic impacts of the AI transition - on the social, the economic, and the natural environment - can be governed from the bottom up, by the parties to AI's own value chains rather than by central mandate. Six modular governance profiles - Reciprocity, Sustainability, Openness, Governance, Access, and Value - attach as licence terms to the ordinary contracts through which AI capabilities are bought, sold, and put to work, the way Creative Commons terms attach to creative works. AIC stands for AI Commons: as adoptions accumulate across value chains, they compose a commons that people can benefit from together - sustained by everyone who draws on it, enclosed by no one. The framework is developed by the AIC Working Group hosted at CLEA, working toward an open international standard.

A transdisciplinary approach to wellbeing  The aims of our research in CLEA are both academic and practical: the vision is to explore avenues that lead to a better world in which people live longer, happier and healthier lives, in harmony with their social and natural environment. In other words, they should increase quality of life or overall well-being for the world population. That requires a better understanding of what well-being, physically and mentally, precisely is, and which measures are likely to have the greatest impact on it.