Copernicus Festival is a

science festival A science festival is a festival that showcases science and technology with the same freshness and flair that would be expected from an arts or music festival and primarily targets the general public. These public engagement events can be varied, ...

held every May in

Kraków Kraków (), or Cracow, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland until 1596 ...

, Poland. It was founded in 2014 and provides lectures, discussions, workshops, film screenings and exhibitions focusing on

neuroscience Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions and disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, development ...

evolutionary biology Evolutionary biology is the subfield of biology that studies the evolutionary processes (natural selection, common descent, speciation) that produced the diversity of life on Earth. It is also defined as the study of the history of life fo ...

physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

, law, and

philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...

at various venues in the city. The event is organized by the

Copernicus Center The Copernicus Foundation ( pl, Fundacja Kopernikowska) is a 501(c)(3) not for profit organization based in the Jefferson Park neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. It was founded by Poles in Chicago in 1971 in order to raise funds towards raisi ...

and the Tygodnik Powszechny Foundation. The majority of events are free of charge to promote accessibility.

Idea and program

Copernicus Festival was created as a field of broad exchange of thoughts of representatives of various disciplines. "Science, art, humanities — each is trying to grasp and understand the phenomena that have a fundamental impact on our lives. (...) We decided to organize the festival so that important questions about the existence and limits of cognition could be raised ''together''.", Grzegorz Jankowicz, one of the festival runners has written in the introduction to the catalog of the first edition of Copernicus Festival. It was held in May 2014 and the leitmotif of the edition was ''Revolutions''. Copernicus Festival main events, that is lectures and panel discussions, take place in the Main Building of the

National Museum in Kraków National may refer to: Common uses * Nation or country ** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen Places in the United States * National, Maryland, ce ...

. The lectures are translated simultaneously into Polish or English by Piotr Krasnowolski. The festival day usually starts with a morning program that includes the meetings of the ''Master's Breakfast'' series at De Revolutionibus Books & Cafe at Bracka Street. In the Basilica of the Holy Trinity, concerts accompanied by lectures take place in the evening. Additional points of the program are the concerts at Fourm Przestrzenie club and the nighttime film screenings in Kino Mikro. Among other festival locations there are

Ludwik Solski Academy for the Dramatic Arts Ludwik () is a Polish given name. Notable people with the name include: * Ludwik Czyżewski, Polish WWII general * Ludwik Fleck (1896–1961), Polish medical doctor and biologist * Ludwik Gintel (1899–1973), Polish-Israeli Olympic soccer player ...

, Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology and

Kraków Philharmonic The Kraków Philharmonic ( pl, Filharmonia Krakowska) is the primary concert hall in Kraków, Poland. It is one of the largest auditoriums in the city. It consists of the main hall for orchestral performances with 693 seats, and two smaller venu ...

. Each edition is accompanied by a free catalog published by '' Tygodnik Powszechny''. The catalog contains the program and supplementary popular science articles. Copernicus Festival is managed with the support of financial resources of the City of Kraków, the

Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of Poland Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland ( pl, Ministerstwo Kultury i Dziedzictwa Narodowego) is a governmental administration office concerned with various aspects of Polish culture. It was formed on 31 October 200 ...

, the

Foundation for Polish Science The Foundation For Polish Science ( pl, Fundacja na rzecz Nauki Polskiej, FNP) is an independent, non-profit making organisation which aim at improving the opportunities for doing research in Poland. Established in 1990, registered in 1991, the ...

and Krakowskie Biuro Festiwalowe. Antonio Damasio at Copernicus Festival

Editions: * 2014: ''Revolutions'' * 2015: ''Genius'' (edition commemorated to Józef Hofmann) * 2016: ''Beauty'' * 2017: ''Emotions'' * 2018: ''Chance'' * 2019: ''Language''

Guests

Over the years the festival guests were, among others: Dominika Dudek, Adam Łomnicki,

Łukasz Orbitowski Łukasz Orbitowski (born 26 October 1977) is a Polish essayist and fantasy and horror writer. As of April 2012 he has published six novels and numerous short stories, collected in four anthologies. Biography Orbitowski is alumnus of the Jagiell ...

Jan Woleński Jan Hertrich-Woleński (also known as Jan Woleński; born 21 September 1940) is a Polish philosopher specializing in the history of the Lwów–Warsaw school of logic and in analytic philosophy. He has spent most of his academic career at the J ...

Krzysztof Zanussi Krzysztof Pius Zanussi (born 17 June 1939) is a Polish film and theatre director, producer and screenwriter. He is a professor of European film at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland where he conducts a summer workshop. He is ...

(2014), Wojciech Bonowicz (since 2014),

Jerzy Vetulani Jerzy Adam Gracjan Vetulani (; 21 January 1936 – 6 April 2017) was a Polish neuroscientist, pharmacologist and biochemist, professor of natural sciences, member of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Polish Academy of Learning, one of the mo ...

(2014–2016), George Ellis,

Anna Wierzbicka Anna Wierzbicka (born 10 March 1938 in Warsaw) is a Poles, Polish linguistics, linguist who is Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University, Canberra. Brought up in Poland, she graduated from Warsaw University and emigrated to Austr ...

Katarzyna Chałasińska-Macukow Katarzyna Chałasińska-Macukow (born 20 March 1946 in Łódź, Poland) is Polish physicist and professor at the University of Warsaw. In 2005 and again in 2008 elected for the post of the Rector (academia), rector of the University of Warsaw. F ...

, Andrzej Olechowski,

Marek Krajewski Marek Krajewski (born 4 September 1966, in Wrocław) is a Polish crime writer and linguist. He is best known for his series of novels set in pre-war Wrocław (which was, at the time, Breslau) with the policeman Eberhard Mock as the protagonist ...

Fisz Bartosz Waglewski (Fisz) born March 19, 1978 in Warszawa, Poland is a Polish rap artist. He is the son of musician Wojciech Waglewski and older brother of Emade (Piotr Waglewski). He studied at Europejska Akademia Sztuk (EAS). The musical style ...

and Emade,

Ewa Łętowska Ewa Łętowska (pronounced: ; born 22 March 1940 in Warsaw) is a Polish lawyer, a specialist in civil law and professor of legal science. Since 1985, she has worked at the Institute of Law of the Polish Academy of Sciences and since 1997, she has ...

(2015), Julian Barbour,

Semir Zeki Semir Zeki FMedSci FRS is a British and French neurobiologist who has specialised in studying the primate visual brain and more recently the neural correlates of affective states, such as the experience of love, desire and beauty that are ge ...

John Banville William John Banville (born 8 December 1945) is an Irish novelist, short story writer, adapter of dramas and screenwriter. Though he has been described as "the heir to Proust, via Nabokov", Banville himself maintains that W. B. Yeats and Henry J ...

, Stefan Chwin, Marcin Rotkiewicz (2016), Hanna and

Antonio Damasio Antonio Damasio ( pt, António Damásio) is a Portuguese-American neuroscientist. He is currently the David Dornsife Chair in Neuroscience, as well as Professor of Psychology, Philosophy, and Neurology, at the University of Southern California, ...

Karen Wynn Karen Wynn is an artist and a Canadian and American Yale University Professor Emerita of psychology and cognitive science. She was born in Austin, Texas, and grew up on the Canadian prairies in Regina, Saskatchewan. Her research explores the cog ...

, Paul Bloom,

Mark Miodownik Mark Andrew Miodownik () is a British materials scientist, engineer, broadcaster and writer at University College London. Previously, he was the head of the Materials Research Group at King's College London, and a co-founder of Materials Libr ...

, Krzysztof Meissner, Andrzej Zoll, Andrzej Białas (2017),

Robert H. Frank Robert Harris Frank (born January 2, 1945) is the Henrietta Johnson Louis Professor of Management and a professor of economics at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University. He contributes to the "Economic View" ...

, Daniel Gilbert, Adam Zagajewski, Andrzej Jajszczyk (2018), Paul Davies, Charles Taylor, Daniel Everett (2019).

Festival team

* Program director:

Michał Heller Michał Kazimierz Heller (born 12 March 1936 in Tarnów) is a Polish professor of philosophy at the Pontifical University of John Paul II in Kraków, Poland, and an adjunct member of the Vatican Observatory staff. He also serves as a lectur ...

* Program board:

Bartosz Brożek Bartosz Paweł Brożek (born 17 June 1977) is a Polish philosopher and jurist whose main research interests are in philosophy of law, philosophy of science, logic and cognitive science. He is currently professor of jurisprudence at the Jagiel ...

, Jerzy Stelmach, Jacek Ślusarczyk, Grzegorz Jankowicz * Team coordinator: Bartłomiej Kucharzyk

References

{{reflist

External links

Official website
Science festivals 2014 establishments in Poland Festivals established in 2014 Science events in Poland Culture in Kraków Annual events in Poland Spring (season) events in Poland