It is an effort to reach the minds and hearts of the public. Set in the university town of Leuven, Belgium, it makes use of process insights to deal with the concreteness of life, and to make sense of our choices in life. We are in a state of war with a destructive modernism and a deconstructive postmodernism. Invention of scientific fact suits the abstractions of modern science. Facts about ultimate reality constructed in laboratories only demonstrate the conditions extant in the lab.
Philosophy kills itself if it permits itself to be defined by science and demonstration.
From a Whiteheadian view, however, there is no opposition between philosophy and science. There can be no opposition of fact and value, because without values there are no facts. During the last part of the conference, Jan Van der Veken opened a discussion about the future of process thought in Europe. This conference may be a hub for discussions about process thought, and ways to start other centers for process thought in Europe and throughout the world. There will be a large-scale conference on Philosophy, Science, and Religion in November 1998, and all are encouraged to submit papers.