Part 2:
Barbara Mittler (Heidelberg University), Paul J. D'Ambrosio (East China Normal University, Shanghai), Daniel Kondor (Complexity Science Hub, Vienna), Benjamin Grant Purzycki (Aarhus University, Denmark)

Moderation: Wolfgang Behr (University of Zurich)

How do societies across history confront the unknown? From evolutionary adaptation to cultural pluralism, we explore how different ways of thinking and social and cultural practices—analytic and holistic, religious and scientific—shape responses to uncertainty. What enables the rise of certain cultural forms, and what leads to their decline? How do political, economic, and institutional forces create or suppress uncertainty?

Bringing together perspectives from anthropology, philosophy, history and economics, evolutionary biology, religious and cultural studies, this symposium examines strategies for navigating uncertainty—from the challenges of early agricultural societies to shifting notions of trust, risk, contingency and stability in different cultural and historical contexts. How do rituals, institutions, and cultural memory mediate unpredictability? And is the impulse to control uncertainty a modern phenomenon—or a defining feature of human existence?