The symposium took place over two days: 5 - 6 November 2021, 2 pm start. All times are in CET.

The program includes four main events, each about 90 mins (more-or-less flexible end time).

November 5, Friday, 2 - 3:30 pm: 
 - Welcome session
 - Presentation of past/ongoing projects by respective members
 - New members introduction
 - Informal social meet-and-greet (around 2:30 pm onward)

November 5, Friday, 5 - 6:30 pm: 
 - John Baez: “Visions for the Future of Physics”. Public talk and discussion.

November 6, Saturday, 2 - 3:30 pm: Metascientific discussions on topics as already polled by members 
 - Main topic: Pedagogical approaches to research concepts (short introductory presentation by Alexander Thomas)
 - Others topics: Diversity, Mental Health

November 6, Saturday, 3:30 pm onward: 
 - Free slot to meet, discuss and/or continue the session on metascientific discussions

Participants: Alex, Pierre, Emily, Anne-Catherine, Viktoria, Flavio, Isha, Leon, Markus, Florian, Robin, Alice, Jan

Topics: - presentation of ongoing projects - “Koala” project about academic publishing (“Dismantling an Academic Mafia”) and a guide for the ethical scientist - next Sejny Summer Institute 2022 - new summer workshop in Belgium or Greece on ontology in different fields

The talk has been recorded, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZLDZTwl8Hw

Participants: Alex, Carlos, Pierre, Alice, … (Guest from Bristol), Markus, Florian, Titouane

Presentation by Alex on “Pedagogical approaches to research concepts”:

"The goal should be, not to implant in the students’ mind every fact that the teacher knows now; but rather to implant a way of thinking that enables the student, in the future, to learn in one year what the teacher learned in two years. Only in that way can we continue to advance from one generation to the next." -- E.T. Jaynes

Slides:

Discussion: - Usual pedgogical contents/research/publications in Academia are often bad - Does it makes sense to see pedagogy as something separated from research? (You teach for 50 % and then you reserach for 50 %) - Teaching material is often very bad. Instpirations could be

1. https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/HomePage
2. Ongoing project initiated by BRCP members: http://pharos-library.com/doku.php

- Carlos: need to rethink the organization of scientific knowledge. Research papers today use the same technology than 400 years ago.

1. Inspiration could be Twitter, but we should not give the control to private institutations/companies, but develop our own decentralized democratic technology/means. Basis for that is to change the “pRotocol” of how scientific knowledge is documented/organized
2. Carlos is part of an organization that is concerned with such questions: https://semf.org.es/about/
3. Alice” part of that is already realized in the Open Science Movement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_science
4. Markus: instead of trying to change the whole of science, focus on our own work and community and create the (local) environment where our scientific work (+ life) is joyful and productive (by our own standards); some of those ideas have been summarized in the founding process of the BRCP in this essay [link]
5. https://mage.uber.space/dokuwiki/_media/material/theinstitute-essay.pdf

- Alice about working hours and mental health: in academia a major drive seems to be “guilt” and feeling responsability towards your colleagues

- Mix of science and politics, especially during the Covid pandemic, is a very dangerous development. - Politicians can abuse scientific vocabulary/ “facts” to legitimate their political program

Follow ups on the discussion after the talk of John Baez: - One of the problems of modern science is the strong focus on particular things, neglecting most of the possible side effects

1. most of our technology reflects this very well: usual technological tools are very good in optimizing one particular thing, but at the same time might produce tons of waste
2. One possible solution by Baez: use broader frameworks (such as category theory) that allow to also include more
3. Markus: or embed research into a more social/ecological instead of a sterile working environment where side effects can be actually felt