| Formation | 1997 |
|---|---|
| Type | Research institute |
Key people | Piet Hut |
| Website | www |
The Kira Institute is a non-profit organization. It was founded in 1997 to encourage open inquiry concerning the nature of scientific knowledge and its relation to other perspectives drawn from a wide variety of fields.
The founders were Piet Hut (astrophysicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton), Roger Shepard (then cognitive psychologist at Stanford University), Steven Tainer (instructor at the Institute for World Religions), Bas van Fraassen (then philosopher of science at Princeton University), and Arthur Zajonc (physicist at Amherst College). [1]
The Kira Institute conducted a series of yearly summer schools at Amherst College, from 1998 to 2002, aimed at bringing together graduate students from various disciplines within science, as well as the history and philosophy of science. [2] Guest speakers were chosen from fields like biology, cognitive science, computer science, art history, philosophy, and sociology of science and included Geshe Thupten Jinpa, Erazim Kohák, Elisabeth Lloyd, Brian Cantwell Smith, Elizabeth Spelke, Lynn Margulis, and David Abram.
In addition, from 1997 to 2005 the founders met several times a year for three-day weekends. These meetings served to guide the group's main research, publications and educational activities. [3] [4]
In 2008, Kira Institute created a Kira Café in the virtual world of Second Life, which hosted workshops on topics such as "laboratories in the metaverse", art history, law, phenomenology, and interdisciplinary studies. [5] [6] The Kira Café had an operating philosophy comparable to Café Scientifique. The building stood until April 2015, when the Café closed.
Mount Holyoke College is a private liberal arts women's college in South Hadley, Massachusetts. It is the oldest member of the historic Seven Sisters colleges, a group of historically female colleges in the Northeastern United States. The college was founded in 1837 as the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary by Mary Lyon, a pioneer in education for women. Mount Holyoke is part of the Five College Consortium in Western Massachusetts.
James Mark Baldwin was an American philosopher and psychologist who was educated at Princeton under the supervision of Scottish philosopher James McCosh and who was one of the founders of the Department of Psychology at Princeton and the University of Toronto. He made important contributions to early psychology, psychiatry, and to the theory of evolution.
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Anthony Thomas Grafton is an American historian of early modern Europe and the Henry Putnam University Professor of History at Princeton University, where he is also the Director the Program in European Cultural Studies. He is also a corresponding fellow of the British Academy and a recipient of the Balzan Prize. From January 2011 to January 2012, he served as the President of the American Historical Association. From 2006 to 2020, Grafton was co-executive editor of the Journal of the History of Ideas.
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Steven A. Tainer is a respected scholar and instructor of contemplative traditions. He is a logician, philosopher, teacher and writer with an extensive background in philosophy of science, mathematical logic and Asian contemplative traditions. One of the central themes of his work involves how different ways of knowing can be compared, contrasted, and/or integrated.
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