An invitation from Prof. Pierluigi Luisi:
Dear Cortona Friends, we are ready to start a new adventure of spirit and emotions, as always under the logo Science and the wholeness of life, and our speakers have prepared for You many intriguing questions; What does it mean, that plants are alive, including those of the deep ocean? How is science connected to moral philosophy, as in the example of Spinoza? and can we go from our modern western philosophical visions, back to the eastern unitarian yin and yang? And from this to the notions of artificial intelligence and complexity? Indeed, a vast universe of different disciplines, but always intrinsically related and dependent one from the other, as the systems view of life demands. And the Cortona-week is the place to ask and work with these questions (do not mind the answer).
Join us in Prato at the Villa San Leonardo al Palco
A program to foster a new class of world leaders
Cortona Week is an interdisciplinary residency where graduate students and young managers from all over the world and from all disciplines come in contact (in addition to several critical scientists) with artists, musicians, spiritual leaders, poets, professionals in medicine and psychology, and politicians.
We work together in round table discussions, lectures and experiential workshops, where the participants can engage, for instance, in painting, sculpture or music, meditation, theatre choosing by themselves which aspects of life are more important for their own equilibrium.
The aim, with the help of world-renowned professionals and visionaries, is to open up the horizon of the participants to the values of ecology, ethics, tolerance, internal introspection as well as the actual new frontiers of science, literature, art, economics — the full display of human experience — where life becomes a system view of interacting parts, and not an addition of single isolated domains.
We devote ourselves to this task with the cognition that such a holistic, systemic thinking is generally not provided by our common academic institutions — which form specialists in only one discipline – and noticing, as a consequence, that the problems of our world cannot be solved or even tackled by only one discipline at a time.
The ultimate, ideal aim of Cortona Week is to forge and catalyze a new class of world leaders — thing of the utmost necessity for our world today; and to reinforce ethics and human dignity in an environment which presently is dangerously close to becoming foreign or even hostile to us.
The Cortona Week is a residential retreat for about 100 participants. Partial participation is not allowed, for the same applies to faculty and staff members. Lectures are in English only, no simultaneous translation is provided.
The Cortona week 2025 will take place Sunday June 29 to Sunday July 6 2025 in Prato, at Franternità San Leonardo al Palco. The total fee of 1500 euro includes full board, double room accommodation and registration fee. Young students and participants under 32 years of age enjoy a reduced total fee of 1000 euros.
SCIENTIFIC DIRECTION: Pier Luigi Luisi, Prof. Emeritus ETH Zurich
ADVISORY BOARD: Fritjof Capra, Physicist and Author, Berkeley, USA; Michel Bitbol, Philosopher, Paris, France; brother David Steindl-Rast, Benedictine Monk, Ithaca, USA; Renuka Singh, Professor of Sociology, New Delhi, India; David Lorimer, Pres. Medical network, Aberdeen, UK; Wittfrida Mitterer, bio-architecture, Professor at LUMSA and Innsbruck university; Jorg Rasche, psychotherapist, Berlin, Germany; Kamran Mofid, Founder of the Globalisation for the Common Good Initiative.