History

From 2021 to 2024, the “Agency, Directionality, and Function: Foundations for a Science of Purpose” project brought together 24 teams from around the world for collaborative, cross-disciplinary research. Team members worked within clusters of projects that connected researchers examining agency, directionality, and goal-directedness using different methodologies and frameworks (cohort program organization). 

Novel administrative and organizational structures and activities pioneered in that project are being continued and further developed by CASP. These include interdisciplinary workshops, large summit meetings, an online administrative platform for communication and dissemination, and open access publication support.

In the final six to eight months of the project, a tremendous amount of momentum emerged, suggesting that a longer horizon of time is needed to pursue these efforts and fulfill the potential of this distinctive arrangement. Additionally, the broad range of topics around the theme of teleology that were explored helped to reveal specific axes where more concentrated effort should be invested.
 

Explore the "Agency, Directionality, and Function: Foundations for a Science of Purpose" website. 

 

Previous participating institutions:

Arizona State

Duke University School of Medicine

Emmanuel College

Federal University of Bahia (UFBA)

French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS)

Georgetown University

Hunter College and The Graduate Center, CUNY

Leibniz University

Lund University

Macquarie University

New York Medical College

Princeton University

Tufts University

University of Arizona

University of the Basque Country

University of Bristol

University of Cambridge

University of Haifa

University of Minnesota

University of Pittsburg

University of Reading

University of Southampton

University of St. Andrews

Uppsala University

Witten/Herdecke University