Founded with support from JTF, for 20 years FQxI has created and supported a vibrant research community tackling foundational questions from the nature of spacetime and quantum mechanics to the role of information in physics, intelligence and agency. But where, concretely, has true progress been made? What are the foundations we can build upon? And where do the big questions and controversies now lie?
To address this, we will create synthetic living reviews of ten core topics. These will unite researchers across disciplines to synthesize knowledge, clarify debates, and identify open questions. For example, a review on determinism will bring together insights from physics, philosophy, and chaos theory to explore how determinism and indeterminism manifest.
Something so ambitious, on such thorny questions, requires an innovative, creative approach. The reviews will be built through complementary and adversarial collaborations. Interdisciplinary teams will pool complementary expertise to research and create comprehensive, evolving accounts. Thirty adversarial collaborations will address unresolved questions by pairing researchers with opposing perspectives. Structured dialogue will allow these teams to examine disagreements rigorously, challenge assumptions, and identify the roots of conflicting views.
The results will be published on an open-access, digital platform, offering modular sections that explore specific subtopics and thematic connections. The “living” format keeps the reviews current, incorporating new research and perspectives over time.
Living reviews will do more than synthesize knowledge: they will include original research, catalyze interdisciplinary collaboration, underpin and guide future research, and make foundational science accessible to broader audiences. By bridging divides between fields, they will clarify our understanding of the universe and humanity’s place within it, inspiring progress and fostering inquiry across disciplines.
