XVII INTERNATIONAL ONTOLOGY CONGRESS

SOLVAY 1927 - 2027

Centenary of the Colloquium that Changed the View of Nature

Under the Honorary Presidency of Pedro Miguel Echenique 

Príncipe de Asturias Prize in Sciences and Max Planck Prize in Physics

OCTOBER 2027

In 1903, the Belgian chemist Ernest Solvay sponsored the creation of a research center bearing his name at the University of Brussels. A few years later, in 1911, he initiated a series of periodic scientific meetings, the first of which—chaired by Hendrik A. Lorentz and devoted to The Theory of Radiation and Quanta—has come to be regarded as a landmark in the history of scientific conferences.

Among the Solvay Conferences, however, the meeting held in October 1927 stands out not only as a defining moment in the history of physics but also as the starting point of a far-reaching philosophical confrontation. Chaired once again by Lorentz, the 1927 colloquium brought together contributions of such depth and scope that the subsequent development of quantum physics throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries can be seen as already present there in germinal form.

Most notably, the conference witnessed the celebrated exchange between Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr, whose opposing views crystallized a fundamental debate on the interpretation of quantum mechanics. What was at stake was not merely a technical disagreement, but a profound divergence concerning the foundations of the natural order and the capacity of human reason to offer an adequate account of physical reality.

Subsequent milestones—such as Bell’s theorem and the experiments conducted by Alain Aspect and Anton Zeilinger—together with the ongoing proliferation of competing interpretations of quantum mechanics, continue to resonate with that original confrontation. In this sense, Solvay 1927 inaugurated a new “endless doctrinal battle” whose implications extend well beyond physics, shaping our broader philosophical image of nature itself.

One hundred years later, this enduring debate will be revisited by eminent scientists and philosophers at the 17th edition of the International Ontology Congress, which for more than thirty years, and under the patronage of UNESCO, has sought to re-examine the classic problems of ontology in the light of contemporary reflection.