The International Research Area on Foundations of the Sciences

Mission: Overview

Justice. Click for enlarging the image Theology. Click for enlarging the image Ceiling. Click for enlarging the image Poetry. Click for enlarging the image Philosophy. Click for enlarging the image. First mover. Click for enlarging. Apollo and Marsyas. Click for enlarging. Adam and Eve. Click for enlarging The Judgement of Solomon. Click for enlarging.
The ceiling of the Signature Room. The four tondi represents (bottom/up, left/right): a) Philosophy and Science (click); b) Poetry and Art (click); c) Theology and Religion (click); d) Justice and Law (click). The four panels, connecting a pair of tondi, represent stories (from Bible and from Greek mythology) related with the symbols of the two tondi they connect: ab) The First Mover and the Constellations (click); bc) Apollo and Marsya (click); cd) Adame and Eve; da) The Judgement of Solomon. Click on each of them for enlarging each image, and on the center for a whole view of the ceiling.

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IRAFS Aims: "From Foundations to Applications"

As anticipated in presenting the the actual Third Edition of the IRAFS, seventeen years after its foundation, we think not only at continuing along the direction of the first two previous editions, expressed in the Foundation Document, but also to integrate them along the lines, emerging as prevailing in the worldwide scientific and technological, but also philosophical research, during the last years.

Such lines move according to two further directions that are like as many branches of the original ones, always devoted to promote an ever more fruitful, effective and wider dialogue:

  1. A special attention for the practical consequences, directly depending on the foundational research, main object of the Area activities. These practical consequences, in the actual worldwide debate, are mainly related with:
    • The ethical and legal issues depending, both on the ecological and the environmental applied research, and on the life and the health sciences and technologies.
    • The multifarious issues (social, cultural, educational, economical...) related with the semantic web and the applied ontologies development - and more generally, with the theoretical and applied research in the artificial intelligence and robotics , aimed at simulating the human intentional behavior. This science and this technology, indeed, is destined to change deeply our lives, and our societies.
  2. A special attention for the dissemination of the contents of our research and applied work that, precisely for its theoretical and practical relevance, requires our maximum effort:
    • For disseminating it in a proper way to a potentially unlimited audience the contents of the scientific research with its related anthropological and social implications, against an over-simplified and often misleading divulgation of such topics, often dominating on the web.
    • For educating the young generations to be not only skilled users of such technologies - as generally they are -, but also aware and cognizant actors of the digital revolution we are living.

All these aims, both the old and the new ones, are synthesized in the Ethics and Program statements illustrating values and actions constituting the Mission of this Third Edition of the IRAFS activities. The organization chart of the IRAFS III Research Groups, is illustrated in the Research Section of this Portal.