Conferences

The first gathering, “A New Dawn,” inaugurates this unfolding inquiry and will be held fully online from April 15–17, 2026, hosted by the Center for Process Studies. Designed to be globally accessible, the conference will convene leading thinkers and emerging scholars from around the world for two and a half days of shared inquiry into the deeper nature of mind—from the subatomic to the ecological, from the human to the cosmic. The program will feature a dynamic mix of plenary lectures, emerging perspectives, and panel discussions, fostering both depth and dialogue across disciplinary boundaries. As we enter this new horizon, we ask: Is consciousness merely an evolutionary by-product, or could it be a fundamental feature of reality itself? What new metaphysical, scientific, and ethical possibilities emerge if mind is not an illusion, but a pervasive dimension of the cosmos?

Ecological Civilization moves away from modern industrial civilization. The signs of the times have demonstrated that it will be the next stage of human development. The 17th International Forum on Ecological Civilization and the 6th International Youth Forum on Ecological Civilization are taking place in this context. They seek to further promote ecological civilization through research and practice and effectively address current ecological crises facing global community. The forums are scheduled to be held on May 24 – May 25, 2024, in Claremont, CA.

Iain McGilchrist’s recent magnum opus The Matter With Things (2021) constitutes one of the most significant contributions to the contemporary process tradition as revealed through layers of neuroscientific data and decades of remarkable clinical research into brain lateralization and the hemisphere hypothesis. Drawing from multiple scientific disciplines, and from both ancient and modern philosophers including Heraclitus, Schelling, James, Bergson, Whitehead, and others, McGilchrist has established himself as a formidable process thinker committed to reintegrating the holistic modes of thought associated with the right hemisphere as a guide to cultural renewal. As part of this effort, he affirms the ontological irreducibility of relationality, time, value, purpose, experience, consciousness, and the sacred. This conference brings leading process thinkers across various disciplines, including physics, neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, and theology into critical dialogue with McGilchrist’s work in a collegial effort to assess, question, extend, and apply it.

This conference draws together Whitehead and Teilhard scholars to advance the possibilities and relevance of process philosophy and theology through an integrative encounter between these two foundational figures.

Join us in Claremont, CA February 15-17, 2023. Co-sponsored by The Cobb Institute, The Institute for Ecological Civilization, and the Institute for the Postmodern Development of China, the “50th Anniversary Conference of the Center for Process Studies” celebrates the 50-year legacy of CPS and its creative transformation in the context of a new generation of process thinkers.

Power and the God of Love: A Process-Open-Relational Conference, November 4-5, at Crosswalk Community Church, Napa, California

Drawing upon the work of Alfred North Whitehead, Teilhard de Chardin, Henri Bergson and a variety of others, the event aims to explore fresh themes of process, organism, temporality, novelty, experience, value, and mind in the context of the philosophical, scientific and religious layers of astrobiological research.