During our ten year history, we have worked to grow a community of researchers with an ever-widening realm of expertise. The important word here is community -- our mission is to connect researchers who might have otherwise never known about each other.
Part of our strategy has been the use of themed programs -- The Nature of Time, Physics of Information, The Physics of What Happens. Our most recent program attracted neurophysicists, computer scientists, sociologists, as well as the more "usual" physicists, mathematicians, and philosophers, together under the theme of Physics of the Observer.
We are proud now to announce our next venture, Agency in the Physical World. It follows our intellectual trajectory over the past programs, drawing deep connections from the most fundamental descriptions in physics and cosmology, to description in terms of observers, agents, and conscious beings. The program is a partnership between FQXi and the Fetzer Franklin Fund, a philanthropic organization dedicated to supporting foundational questions at the frontiers of physics, biology, and consciousness research.
The program features our familiar components for building community: a conference, essay contests, Large grants, and Mini-Grant rounds. Our first essay contest has just launched, and the Large Grant round will open in the coming weeks -- please stay tuned for that announcement.
The program also supports research by the two "B-Area" centers -- B for Boston and (San Francisco) Bay -- formed during FQXi's Physics of the Observer program. The work of the B-Area centers will try to better understand agency in physical systems through their capabilities to learn, to predict, to process information, and to choose. The centers also will serve as hubs for visits and other interactions that connect all researchers around the world funded by the APW program.
We envision the APW program will lead researchers to question how we define, identify, and measure agency, intelligence, and consciousness, and to investigate how these concepts fit into our current physical theories. These questions are contentious and difficult, even within the context of FQXi's usual ambit of thorny topics.
But of course, that's why we're asking them!