Life & synthetic biology
What does it mean to work with the intelligence of living systems? Together with the synthetic biology community, we explore the shift from controlling nature to partnering with it.
Science · Technology · Humanities
Horizon Institutefor Transdisciplinary Dialogue
Where science, technology and the humanities come together — to discover new paths and tell new stories.
Approach
Narratives drive science
Every scientific era runs on stories: about what nature is, what machines can do and where we stand among them.
Many of the stories we inherited no longer hold. The image of life as a machine to be controlled and reprogrammed is losing its credibility. The debate about artificial intelligence swings between promise and fear. What is missing is a language that does justice to both the science and the people it affects.
The Horizon Institute is a space for transdisciplinary dialogue. We bring researchers, practitioners and thinkers from biology, technology, philosophy and literature into conversation, with academia and industry at the same table. Our aim is practical: better questions, clearer language and new narratives that people can actually work with.
- Essays
- Interviews & podcast
- Talks & workshops
- Transdisciplinary dialogue forums
Fields of inquiry
Three conversations we are having
AI & language
Large language models are made of language. Working with them well is a matter of rhetoric, nuance and pragmatics as much as engineering. We study how people and AI can think and write together, and how to draw on humanity’s collected archive in unexpected ways.
Science & narrative
Metaphors shape research agendas, funding decisions and public trust. We examine the stories science tells about itself and help develop new ones that are accurate and credible.
People
Who we are
Dr. Felix Ernst Schmelzer
Founder
A specialized non-specialist.
Felix considers himself a bridge builder whose work lies in bringing different perspectives together. He wrote his master’s thesis on relativity theory and quantum mechanics in contemporary poetry at the University of Münster, Germany, and his PhD on storytelling in Renaissance mathematical treatises at the University of Navarra, Spain.
After nearly a decade of teaching and research at universities in Europe and Latin America, he changed fields and has since worked as a facilitator and communication advisor for industry. These experiences shaped his vision of the Horizon Institute as a space for transdisciplinary dialogue that brings together academia and industry.
Writing
Essays and conversations
Felix Ernst
Essays on artificial intelligence, synthetic biology and the place of the human in science and technology.
felixernst.substack.com Read and subscribe →The Biological Awakening
For the synthetic biology community, founders, investors and philosophers: on what it means to work with the intelligence of life, with interviews from the field.
bioawakening.substack.com Read and subscribe →Contact