Francis Heylighen: home page

Address:: Center "Leo Apostel", Vrije Universiteit Brussel,
Krijgskundestraat 33, B-1160 Brussels, Belgium
(map and directions)
Phone:: +32-2-640 67 37
Fax:: +32-2-644 07 44
Email:: fheyligh at vub.ac.be (Francis Heylighen)
(replace " at " by "@")

If you wish to contact me, please note that I prefer email to fax, phone or letter. However, take into account that I get lots of messages. Therefore I may not be able to reply soon. To make sure your message would pass through my spam filters and be duly noticed, please use a clear subject and include my full name.

I am a research professor at the Free University of Brussels (VUB), where I direct the transdisciplinary research group on "Evolution, Complexity and Cognition". I am affiliated with the Center "Leo Apostel" and the Department of Philosophy. I am an editor of the Principia Cybernetica Project, an international organization for the collaborative development of an evolutionary-systemic philosophy.

The main focus of my research is the evolution of complexity: how do higher levels of organization originate (metasystem transitions) and develop? How do systems self-organize, adapt and achieve some form of cognition? I have worked in particular on the development of collective knowledge and intelligence, and its application to the emerging intelligent web, or "global brain".

I use this evolutionary-cybernetic approach as a framework for the integration of ideas from different disciplines into an encompassing "world view". This broad evolutionary view, together with its practical applications on advanced web systems, has helped me to develop a broad, but concrete vision on the future of the information society. I also teach an introductory course (in Dutch) on this topic at the VUB. My lecture notes are being turned into a textbook, first in Dutch, then (with more technical detail) in English. I also teach a more advanced course on Cognitive Systems (lecture notes available in English). I have several PhD students from diverse backgrounds working on related subjects.

As a true interdisciplinarian, I have moreover done research and published papers about various subjects in various scientific disciplines, from mathematical physics, and computer support systems to humanistic psychology, including the following:

Collective Intelligence, and the global brain
Social Progress and the measurement of Happiness (with Jan Bernheim)
Algorithms for Learning Webs (with Johan Bollen)
Foundations of Cybernetics and Systems Theory (with Cliff Joslyn and Valentin Turchin)
Evolutionary Development of Social Systems (with the famous methodologist Donald T. Campbell)
Memetics or mechanisms for cultural evolution
Formality/context-dependence in Linguistics (with Jean-Marc Dewaele)
Maslow's theory of the Self-Actualizing Personality
Foundations of Quantum Mechanics and of Space-Time Structure (see also my PhD. Thesis)
Gifted people and their problems (for those who recognize themselves in these traits)

Publications

Check my list of some 100 publications for more details about my work (including downloadable versions of most of my papers). To find my most cited publications and the papers that cite them,

check Google Scholar. For the curious, here is an automatic

numerical analysis of my citations, including my H-index (25: pretty good!). The most recent (unpublished work) can be found in our

ECCO working papers archive.

A little more about myself

As an amateur, I have also produced some artwork (photography and painting) and poetry. For a more detailed, formal description of my activities, check my biographical sketch or my (not quite up-to-date) Curriculum Vitae. To get an idea of my character, check my personality profile according to the "Big Five" psychological dimensions. Here is a

Youtube playlist of music I like.

If you would like to see me in action, here are some videos:

an interview where I explain why I find self-organization so fascinating (held at the Lakeside Labs in Klagenfurt, Austria, on a hot 2009 summer workshop),
a presentation on stigmergy in digital ecosystems (at a 2007 conference at the European Commission in Brussels)

If you're curious how others see me, you can find references to my work on other web pages, such as a satirical interview in "Wired", an entry on me in Wikipedia, the list of "Great Thinkers and Visionaries on the Net", "Francis Heylighen: pioneer of the global brain" by Ben Goertzel, or a rather sensationalist feature article in New Scientist.