The InCosmiCon research center and its activities in the field of SETI, big history and interculturality

Abstract

As announced at the IAC 2019 held in Washington, at the beginning of 2020 the University of Insubria (Italy), in collaboration with the UCSS of Lima (Peru), has created a new research center called InCosmiCon (Intelligence in the Cosmic Context), based at the Department of Human Sciences, Innovation and Territory (DISUIT). Its goal is to investigate the nature of intelligence in an interdisciplinary way and with a realistic approach, in the context of the history of humankind, of our planet and the whole universe, avoiding the specular errors of reductionism and dualism. InCosmiCon has already been joined by various illustrious scientists in the _eld of space sciences, as the former IAU Secretary General Piero Benvenuti, now Honorary President of InCosmiCon, and also by some members of the IAA SETI Committee, as Paolo Musso, Director of InCosmiCon, and the present Chairman of the IAA SETI Committee Claudio Maccone, who has been nominated Coordinator of the InCosmiCon SETI Section, whose aim is to support the implementation of SETI programs everywhere it is possible, especially in Italy and Latin America, and to participate in the interdisciplinary work about extraterrestrial intelligence promoted by the IAA SETI Committee. Other Sections of InCosmiCon are devoted to Big History and Intercultural Communication, especially focusing on the extraordinary experience of the UCSS Amazonian seat, the UCSS-Nopoki of Atalaya, which could be also a model for a positive interaction with a hypothetical extraterrestrial civilization. In the present paper some of the InCosmiCon members are going to present its structure, its _rst results, and its projects for the next future, while a separate paper will be speci_cally devoted to a Peruvian project about Astrobiology and Optical SETI.