Vision and Mission

The Academia Engelberg Foundation recognizes the growing need of science and society for a better understanding with regard to new and highly complex issues, how they relate to society (including politics, culture, ethics, religion, education) and industry, and how they impact on the increasing global inequity.

The Academia Engelberg Foundation organizes annual conferences in the Abbey of Engelberg, each of which addresses a specific scientific issue. In this way it is seeking to establish a dialogue between numerous disciplines. Through personal exchanges between participants from a large number of different  disciplines, all participants on the one hand are made aware of the way the other participants view and question their own discipline. At the same time, they contribute to the discussion of the common theme and thus have concrete experience of the emergence of a comprehensive perception of the issue. Academia Engelberg firmly believes that this experience will decisively improve the discussion within both the scientific community and society.

In a pluralistic society, sustainable progress can only take place in dialogue with the groups concerned and in a way that embraces a wide range of needs, interests and activities. But this is not possible without finding a new form of language between science, politics, ethics, religion, culture and industry that allows the open exchange of arguments.

Recent history has painfully shown what happens when decision-making processes are dominated by linear thinking that is fixated solely on economic aspects and when cultural, religious and social dimensions are excluded from the equation.