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Biography |
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Dr. Biljana Papazov Ammann
„One should start with oneself, but never end with oneself“
Born in 1948 in Novi Sad, ex Jugoslavia, she grew up in Bulgaria, immersed in the Slavic tradition with a profound knowledge of the culture and the relevant three languages: Bulgarian, Serbo-Croat and Russian. Schooling was in Sofia, Moscow and again Sofia, followed by studies at the Technical University for Forestry in Sofia, where she specialized in landscape architecture.
After five years of employment in the Planning Department of “Sofproject”, she felt the need for a complete change under the stagnating political atmosphere, and made the decision to drastically alter her path by switching to philosophy where she obtained her doctorate in the Department of Methodology of Science at the Philosophical Institute of the Bulgarian Academy of Science.
In 1987, she was invited by the Swiss government as a guest scientist. Subsequently she stayed, thus enabling her to further develop her unique and sensitive approach between the Eastern and Western societies. As her awareness and knowledge of Western society developed, she sought to integrate apparently incompatible worlds: East and West, religion and science, rich and poor. As a member of the program committee she helped to coin the first leitmotiv of Academia-Engelberg and still challenges her genuine passion for finding the way towards a better world.
She also participated by teaching in activities of the Federal School of Technology in Zurich and at the University of Bern about discursive methods, and shared her views in international conferences in Montpellier on the dispute on genetic engineering, and lately in the Darwin Now conference at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, organized by the British Council.
Publications on Science and Humanity, Scientific Knowledge, Social Ecology, New Approach to Understanding the World, Battle on Objectivity within Society: the female dilemma.
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Abstract |
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What do we need as visionaries: Progress or Development?
This is my question today, as I deal with the topic of Biovisionaries here in the Library of Alexandria.
I ask this question because I am convinced that we need to build a new culture of questioning. We need a culture orienting itself by authentic questions.
How can we develop taste and the ability to distinguish between those questions which are cognitive, statement- oriented and those which are authentic, close to life and to people?
What is more important: cognizance or decision for action?
How can we move between Statements and Questions?
Statements reflect the need to understand the world. But they are the result of past experience and are often contained in frameworks which are coined by society. They may even protect old routines which hinder innovation.
Questions, in contrast to statements¸ can transform our judgements and prejudices. Questions give birth to energy for new orientation, for a more conscious future.
This orientation towards the future, towards vision provokes those choice-questions, and they alone will open the way for an urge to change the world.
Visions need people who are free!
The quality of freedom is inherent in the question.
We must strive for this quality through choice-questions. If we cannot befriend these choice-questions with science, it will disengage from the questioners and will not be human science anymore.
Thus we need a new humility of thinking – as it has been wonderfully defined by the German philosopher Heidegger: “The question is the devoutness of thinking.”
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