The main research focus of the Collegium Helveticum lies on its «Emotion Project» entitled «Die Rolle der Emotion: ihr Anteil bei menschlichem Handeln und bei der Setzung sozialer Normen» that was established in the beginning of the winter term 04/05.
The project is supported by the cogito foundation, and there are (six) fellows from the University of Zurich and of the ETH Zurich involved. Two associate fellows of the field of Economics and young researchers writing their dissertation in this context are incorporated as well.
The experts from the fields of Chemistry, History, Engineering, Brain Science, Economics, Pharmacy and Religious Philosophy try to challenge the general question of the role of emotion in human actions and its significance in terms of establishing social norms. In doing so, they use a synthesis of the experiences and results of their areas of expertise.
The research allow to approach fundamental problems on the one hand and on the other hand they render possible to draw a bow from the quantum mechanical treatment of molecular states over a large number of system hierarchies to the interpretation of historical events. The new approach chosen here calls for a new structure regarding its development. While in the past similar problems were analytically expanded from a single field to other fields (Artificial Intelligence from Computer Science, Brain Sciences from Biological Chemistry etc.), a core group of experts from different fields are teaming up here to try a synthesis based on the insights of their respective domains.