World Academy of Art & Science World University Consortium Agenda for Future Programming November 10, 2015

Increasing globalization of the economy in Space, accelerating velocity of movement and social change in Time, growing Complexity and integration of activities, sectors and levels of society, rapid Evolution of global society undergoing continuous transformation, and rising imbalance between technological development and cultural adaptation present unparalleled challenges for individuals, nations and the human community. Evolving effective responses to these challenges and ways to transform them into opportunities for human progress lie at the heart of the Academy’s agenda in collaboration with the World University Consortium and partnering organizations.

On November 10^th WAAS and WUC convened a meeting in Geneva to summarize core findings of fifteen conferences and workshops conducted over the past four years and to identify the agenda for future work. A consensus has emerged from these efforts that a new conceptual framework is urgently needed to reflect the complex realities of global society. This calls for a paradigm shift in thinking in the social sciences as significant as the earlier shifts in the natural sciences from a geocentric to a heliocentric universe and from a mechanistic Newtonian world to the complexity revealed by Quantum Mechanics. This paradigm shift will represent a quantum shift away from mechanistic, naturalistic, materialistic conceptions and models of human society, making human welfare the focal point and central objective, affirming the central importance and validity of universal values in the human sciences, restoring scientific legitimacy to subjective experience, and recognizing the catalytic role of creative individuals in the evolution of the collective.