The Helix Center

This roundtable explores memory as a dynamic, evolving process that shapes identity, consciousness, and our relationship to the past, present, and future. It considers how individual and collective memories are formed, transformed, and experienced, and their significance in understanding the self.

This roundtable explores the evolutionary and biological roots of consciousness and emotion, drawing on Joseph LeDoux’s work to reconsider how emotions arise from fundamental survival processes rather than pre-formed states. It brings together perspectives from biology, neuroscience, psychiatry, and philosophy to examine how the brain constructs emotional experience and meaning.

This roundtable explores the conceptual foundations of our current planetary era and how emerging perspectives challenge traditional distinctions between humans and the non-human world, nature and artifice, and agency and objectivity. It brings together interdisciplinary viewpoints to consider how these shifts inform our understanding of human action and responsibility in times of ongoing global crisis.

This roundtable examines the concept of “design” in nature, considering whether the apparent order, efficiency, and aesthetic coherence of natural forms can be understood without invoking external teleology. It explores how ideas of immanent purpose, as discussed in classical philosophy (e.g., Aristotelian thought), relate to modern perspectives grounded in Darwinian evolution and physical first principles, and whether principles from physics, biology, and complex systems can account for the emergence of functional and adaptive structures in nature.

This roundtable explores the significance of libraries across their many forms—physical, digital, and cognitive—as systems for organizing, preserving, and transmitting knowledge. It considers their epistemic and mnemonic roles in shaping how information is stored, accessed, and interpreted, as well as their broader cultural and philosophical importance in structuring individual and collective understanding.

This roundtable explores the concept of happiness from philosophical, psychological, and ethical perspectives, examining how it is defined, measured, and understood across both individual experience and the span of a life. It considers questions about the relationship between pleasure and well-being, the role of happiness in relation to others’ welfare, and how contemporary approaches such as positive psychology influence broader social, economic, and policy frameworks.

This roundtable will explore translation as a fundamental cultural, psychic, and aesthetic process that extends beyond its traditional role as a technical linguistic practice, shaping how meaning is displaced, exchanged, and renewed across contexts.

This roundtable will examine how advances in genetics and neuroscience, along with ideas from quantum mechanics, are reshaping conceptions of free will, individual choice, and their implications for law.

This roundtable will examine the role of the body in musical experience, perception, and cognition through dialogue between artists and scientists.

This roundtable will examine the gender gap in STEM, the challenges women face in advancing in scientific fields, and the cultural, psychological, and structural factors that shape equal opportunity in science.

This roundtable will examine children’s drawings and narratives to explore development, representation, and the universal and culture-specific dimensions of inner experience.

This roundtable will examine the nature of love across different forms and perspectives, considering insights from history, neuroscience, psychoanalysis, poetry, and other disciplines.

This roundtable will examine movement in life through evolution, coordination dynamics, social interaction, kinesthesia, and aesthetics, and how these perspectives help us understand how we move, adapt, and relate to others.