The chairman of Voices from Oxford, Denis Noble, was invited to participate and speak at this Congress held in Santiago de Chile from 13th to 18th January 2025. A wide range of world specialists in disciplines ranging between philosophy, science, social sciences and the humanities presented talks in much the same format as TED talks, each presenter being asked to explain the essence of their contribution in less than 20 minutes. In many ways, this meeting is the equivalent in South America of the IAI Festivals held here in the UK at Hay-on-Wye in the summer and in London in the autumn. Just as at the IAI festivals, the audiences are enthusiastic, mostly younger, people eager to contribute to discussion of the major challenges facing humanity today.
The 2025 talks, more than 100, are all posted on YouTube and available free of charge on the Congress website link: https://congresofuturo.cl/talks All presentations are in English or Spanish.
Voices from Oxford has been given permission to feature some of these presentations and will do so in a series of future posts. This is the first of our posts and highlights the series of four talks “Under the lens of complexity”. These include Denis Noble, biologist, on “Humanity: more than genes”, Daniel Remenik, specialist on probability and dynamic systems, on “Mathematics and the Modern World”, Francisco Forster, specialist on mathematics and artificial intelligence, on “Technologies and Secrets of the Universe”, and Maria Gabriela Huidobro, historian on the role of women in history, on “Relationships and the passage of time”.
Later posts will feature more details on a selection from more than 100 other important presentations. This Congress is the biggest event of its kind in South America and was founded more than 15 years ago following the downfall of the Pinochet regime in Chile. The formal Congress Dinner was held in the restored Presidential Palace where the them President, Allende, was killed when Pinochet’s troops staged their murderous coup in 1973.
