The central characteristics of classical philosophy are the commitment to universality, the request to understand and to explain reality with its visible and invisible features, the request to understand what there is beyond the everyday visible world; in short: to get truth, the good and beauty.

Because of the loss of the central characteristics of classical philosophy during the mutation process of philosophy during the 20th century the quest for a new paradigm of sciences emerged. The paradigm of transdisciplinarity was first formulated not by a philosopher, but by a quantum physicist, namely by Basarab Nicolescu. “The Manifesto of Transdisciplinarity” is written. My search for a new paradigm started in the early 90ies of the last century and generated itself from my investigation of contemporary philosophy – philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, theory of sciences, logic –, which brought about its misleading features.

Therefore, in this project the focus is on the relevance of the basic sciences and its methods and the different disciplinary sciences for generating the paradigm of transdisciplinarity. The question is asked whether or not the paradigm of transdisciplinarity is able entail the central characteristics of classical philosophy and those of the various empirical sciences.

Because of its relevance in sciences, arts, and in everyday institutional, personal, and collective practise, there is a focus is on the development of transdisciplinary research groups with respect to particular questions of research. Especially young critical scholars in science, arts, and societies will become engaged in our research programmes.