Einstein Zirkel: Exploring otherness on Earth and beyond

Project team: Susanne Veit, DeZIM; Steffi Pohl (Coordinator), FU Berlin; Lena Noack (Co-coordinator), FU Berlin; Ursula Kessels, FU Berlin; Mickael Baque, DLR; Ulrike Klinger, Weizenbaum Institute; Miriam Kyselo, NTNU Norway; Frank Postberg, FU Berlin; Dirk Schulze-Makuch, TU Berlin; Michael Waltemathe, RUB Bochum; Kai Wünnemann, MfN, FU Berlin

The Einstein Circle “Exploring Otherness on Earth and Beyond” brings together researchers from a wide range of disciplines to investigate how “otherness” is perceived and conceptualized—whether in the form of extreme environmental conditions, scenarios of planetary colonization, or the idea of extraterrestrial life.

While the natural sciences tend to understand otherness as something to be explored—new environments, potential life forms, unknown planetary systems—social sciences and humanities often approach it as a source of disruption, threat, or existential reflection. The Circle connects these perspectives and develops shared research questions and epistemological foundations.

The project includes workshops, planetarium formats, interdisciplinary writing phases, and a final conference. Its aim is to integrate theoretical and empirical perspectives in order to better understand and contextualize future challenges such as natural disasters, planetary migration, and contact with extraterrestrial life.

Project website: https://exoeinstein.userpage.fu-berlin.de/

Scientific expertise is typically confined to discipline-specific theories and methods, while real-world problems are complex and require knowledge from multiple fields to be fully understood and addressed.

Our project pursues a particularly strong form of interdisciplinarity by bringing together insights and methods from highly diverse fields. Our ambition is to bridge the gap between the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, and to overcome the persistent dichotomy between abstract philosophical reflection and the study of otherness as a natural and empirical phenomenon.

Natural disasters, for example, must be understood from a geophysical perspective, but they also have direct or indirect impacts on humans—through media representation, shaping perception, cognition, and behavior. People may feel threatened or develop constructive ways of coping.

A similar dynamic applies to extraterrestrial life: planetary science is needed to understand environments, and biology to understand life systems. At the same time, extraterrestrial life also affects religious beliefs, human cognition, and behavior, making it equally relevant for the social sciences and humanities. No single discipline possesses all the theories and methods required to fully grasp these complex issues. Our aim is therefore to combine and integrate these perspectives to achieve a comprehensive understanding.

Preparing for such questions must begin before critical situations arise, so that appropriate tools are available when needed. Within the Einstein Circle, we therefore examine both the challenges and perceptions associated with unfamiliar and unknown situations.

The Einstein Circle integrates multiple disciplines to study otherness, developing new research questions and an interdisciplinary research program to help prepare society for potential planetary and extraterrestrial challenges.

Funded by the Einstein Foundation, the Einstein Circle organized six interdisciplinary workshops with different thematic focuses at various locations (e.g. the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, DLR, and the Weizenbaum Institute), as well as a kick-off meeting, a planetarium show, a writing retreat, and a final conference.

Building on the interdisciplinary discussions, a Collaborative Research Centre (CRC/SFB) proposal was developed to systematically advance interdisciplinary research on the topic.

• Homepage: https://exoeinstein.userpage.fu-berlin.de/index.html