So, I'll take off my mask for the moment of speaking if you know that.

First of all, we would also like to thank the others for inviting us, for choosing our symposium,

what we have proposed to be discussed, and to allow for a bit of a different perspective maybe,

or a different angle on the topic of scientific ethics, both Simone Bruders and I, and our Ryschik.

We are literary scholars, so you might think we're sort of imposing very different ideas on scientific ethics,

but we hope that by the end of these three days we'll be able to see that we could, in fact, talk to each other,

and hopefully this I grow a sense from the first couple of introductions that this may actually be the case.

So thank you to the organizers, and thank you for the short introductions that allow us to think ahead of where we might be on the Friday afternoon.

We will be doing the introductions together, I'll start with a couple of introductory words,

and then Simone will go to introduce the actual program and questions, or main research questions.

So in their call for this domestic week, the Volkswagen Foundation draws attention to the numerous and quick changes in scientific research

that pose new challenges for an ethics-guided discussion of what kind of science is done and how.

This idea of ever-changing scientific innovation in need of new ethical consideration has been brought up in the recent publication

by astrophysicist and former president of the Royal Society, Martin Reade.

In If Science Is to Save Us, published earlier this year, Reade lists three interlinked mega-challenges humanity will face in the near future.

One, providing food and energy for a more demanding population while avoiding depletion of the biosphere and dangerous climate change.

Two, coping with the ethical and security challenges posed by ever-advancing biotechnology while harnessing its benefits for health and agriculture.

Three, enabling artificial intelligence, the cybernet and social media to transform our economy and our society,

despite vulnerability to malfunction, natural or malicious, that could cascade globally.

Although not explicitly noted in each case, we believe that all three challenges seem to be tied to ethical conundrums,

or questions with implications of what to do and what not to do, how to produce more food but not harm the environment,

how to reap the results of biotechnological and AI research but not endanger the human.

But they all seem subsumed by the general idea of following the science, or if science is to save us, what if, that is, what we must or must not do.

What these considerations seem to leave out, at first glance at least, is that with each of these, science itself is challenged not to follow the science in all directions, in all times, by all means.

As part of this symposium, we were interested in the idea of ignorance as a strategic ploy that is also linked to research ethics, specifically the notion that knowledge should not be pursued at all costs.

We are not interested in the normative implications of what this should not be, rather in the discursive conditions of this notion and the ways in which such ethical considerations are voiced and negotiated.

We suggest that the family narratives, really so, for some of you maybe, but still, narratives in literature alongside narratives in the realms of public and scientific debate, may help to read and understand both.

Patterns of these debates are recurring and metaphors, rhetorical figures, etc. etc. lend themselves to textual analysis.

Furthermore, literary and cultural works explore those limits and thus participate in producing such narratives.

Therefore, the proposed symposium aims at exploring what and how literary and cultural perspectives on the limits of knowledge and knowledge production can contribute to public and scientific debates about the ethics of science,

or to include the social sciences and the humanities to the limits and ethics of research, rather than do Anglophone science just meaning the natural sciences.

Literary and cultural productions have played a major role in negotiating the ethical limits imposed on and transgressed by scholarly research.

In archaeology, for example, this may result in closing excavation sites.

Such a scenario depicted in Adam Falk's Albertan may be brought into fruitful dialogue with current research on limits of knowledge in archaeology, we suggest.

In biomedicine, the ability of scientists to capture embryonic stem cells may be the key to curing neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, but many of the ethical questions on human plumbing, as examined in Katsuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go.

If pursuing knowledge means using harmful or otherwise improper means, choosing ignorance may in fact be read as a moral virtue, a notion discussed by, among others, David Magnus, director of biomedical ethics, who contrasts risk management versus pre-cautionary mechanism in one or many volumes, but certainly an essential one, a contribution to the study of agnatology or ignorance by the

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her analysis also contributes to the elaboration of an underlying concept of knowledge and

non-knowledge in the literary text.

In two panel discussions, we will enter into a dialogue with experts from the natural and

social sciences as well as various disciplines from the humanities.

Our aim is to find out what areas of non-knowledge and the unknown are virulent in their respective

field of study at the moment and how these questions are related to ethical issues in

their disciplines.

Thus we hope to shed light on the specific narratives about these aspects, how they are

addressed within their scientific communities, if or how they are communicated to the public.