Kira Institute

It was founded in 1997 to encourage open inquiry concerning the nature of scientific knowledge and its relation to other perspectives drawn from a wide variety of fields.

The founders were Piet Hut (astrophysicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton), Roger Shepard (then cognitive psychologist at Stanford University), Steven Tainer (instructor at the Institute for World Religions), Bas van Fraassen (then philosopher of science at Princeton University), and Arthur Zajonc (physicist at Amherst College).

[2] Guest speakers were chosen from fields like biology, cognitive science, computer science, art history, philosophy, and sociology of science and included Geshe Thupten Jinpa, Erazim Kohák, Elisabeth Lloyd, Brian Cantwell Smith, Elizabeth Spelke, Lynn Margulis, and David Abram.

These meetings served to guide the group's main research, publications and educational activities.

[3][4] In 2008, Kira Institute created a Kira Café in the virtual world of Second Life, which hosted workshops on topics such as "laboratories in the metaverse", art history, law, phenomenology, and interdisciplinary studies.