Phase one of a new experiment with human "guinea-pigs" was launched in the Swiss alpine resort of Crans-Montana in September 2006 (14-16th). Some of you who will read this are among the 270 participants at the first biennial World Knowledge Dialogue Symposium who volunteered to take part in the experiment. Others among you may have heard of the World Knowledge Dialogue from a colleague or friend. Perhaps you received an invitation to attend, but felt your career advancement plan could not afford the "luxury" of taking time off from other professional commitments? You may feel skeptical about the value of such an initiative, or you may quite simply not have grasped what it's all about, but you are curious enough to have come seeking information. (You are unlikely to be reading this if you are the biomedical researcher invitee who responded "Social scientists should be drowned at birth".) So what is it all about, this World Knowledge Dialogue Symposium, and what is so unique about it?

Three days of frank exchanges between the world's top academics and practitioners in the natural and social sciences closed with a call from Dame Julia Higgins to do everything possible to bridge the gap between the two disciplines "for the sake of humanity".

With most of the World Knowledge Dialogue (WKD) Symposium's participants holding positions of influence in the academic, scientific, economic and political fields, the challenge of the Symposium's ten volunteer reporters was not only to convey the essence of presentations, but also to capture contributions coming from participants with different perspectives and backgrounds-- to encourage communication, interaction and debate.

The simultaneously ambitious and mysterious-sounding slogan of the World Knowledge Symposium, "Towards a modern humanism", reflects the very nature of the challenge of this first Symposium: to bridge the gap between the natural sciences and the humanities. A lofty ideal, but how can we achieve it?

Neuroscience's contribution to our understanding of evolution and the human brain can also provide insight into our understanding of consciousness, culture and human nature. The reknowned French neuroscientist, Professor Jean-Pierre Changeux illustrated to delegates at the World Knowledge dialogue that it is possible to form a coherent and complementary dialogue between the humanities and cognitive neuroscience, by exploring the relationship that exists between Brain, Mind and Culture.

The symposium 2006 is an institutional initiative to bridge the gap between the natural and the human/social sciences starting from new, revolutionary discoveries with potential impact at the scale of paradigmatic changes.