In May 2024, the Plasticity team organized the Shapeshifters Symposium, a transdisciplinary two-day event that explored the concept of plasticity across academic domains and beyond. Researchers, societal stakeholders, and artists came together to question what it means to be a shape within a shapeshifting society, a form within a form – adapting, evolving, and mutating, along with its environment. The panel sessions from day one are now available on our YouTube channel. See below:

Plasticity – by our running definition, the ability to be molded in various forms while maintaining a core identity – is a term that is increasingly used within various fields of science, e.g., neuroscience, plant and cell biology, and within the humanities. However, the meanings and uses of plasticity vary across these fields. How are these different usages – from shapeshifting to adaptability – related across disciplines, and how can plasticity be developed into a threshold concept within fields where it is currently not in use?

Day One of the symposium consisted of four panel discussions, interspersed by coffee, tea, and lunch breaks to mingle and connect. Two facilitators framed each panel’s topic with a statement from their perspective. After that, the conversation was opened to all people present ‘fishbowl-style’, meaning everybody is invited to join (and leave) the available seats on stage and add to the discussion with questions and thoughts.

On the second day, we continued the discussions and collectively worked on articles for a special issue of Interdisciplinary Science Reviews. You are welcome to check the results at: Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, Volume 50, Issue 3-5, September 2025, and Volume 51, Issue 1, March 2026 (link will follow)

Introduction

Shapeshifters Panel I – Plasticity, Complexity, and Circular Causality

Shapeshifters Panel II – Plasticity from Within and from Without

Shapeshifters Panel III – Time & Mind

Shapeshifters Panel IV – Meaning making across epistemic cultures

Day One — Symposium Program 

09:00 Registration & Coffee

09:30–11:00 Panel I – Plasticity, Complexity, and Circular Causality 
Moderator: Dr. Yaron Caspi
Panel facilitators: Prof. Dr. Ray Noble & Prof. Dr. Peter Sloot

The concept of Plasticity is intricately linked to complexity. It is hard to imagine a case in which a system is highly complex yet low in plasticity. For example, one can think of Brain Plasticity. Had the brain been a simple system, it could not have had the level of Plasticity observed. But the same applies to Plasticity in other fields, such as phenotypic plasticity, networks Plasticity, or political Plasticity.

But complexity often depends on interactions across multiple levels. In many multi-level systems, both bottom-up and top-down mechanisms of causality operate. In such systems, one can speak of circular causality.

In that session, we attempted to clarify the relation between complexity, mechanisms of top-down and bottom-up causality, and Plasticity. We will discuss how ideas from philosophy, natural science, social science, and beyond about top-down and bottom-up causation inform the thinking about Plasticity.

11:30–13:00 Panel II – Plasticity from within and from without 
Moderators: Dr. Esmee Geerken & Dr. Yaron Caspi
Panel facilitators: Dr. Danqing Lui & Prof. Dr. Frank Seebacher

Plasticity can only be defined for a particular system, organism, or item. Thus, at least for our running definition, there is no plasticity without identity maintenance. However, maintaining identity occurs only in a given environment. I.e., a second system that operates outside the plastic system. Thus, there is also no plasticity without an (outside) environment.

For some biological systems, the relationship between the in and the out can be conceptualized as a flow of energy or information. For these systems, one can ask: Chemically, how are they moldable/adaptive across space and time within environments? And, biologically, how does the interaction with the biosphere or ecosystem support plasticity? Similarly, one can ask whether the system’s resilience supports or opposes its plasticity. Are these two things compatible with each other? Complementary? Or maybe opposing solutions to the same problem of interaction with the environment?

This panel focused on understanding chemical and biological plasticity through its identity maintenance and environmental interactions projects to non-biological systems, such as synthetic systems, material systems, or human-made structures. Drawing examples from biology, material science, theoretical humanities, and beyond, this panel explores how interactions with the surroundings and information flow between the in and the out shape the system’s identity. Furthermore, we explored the importance of different scales and levels to maintaining and diversifying the system’s identity. Consequently, we sought to understand how this discussion guides the development of plasticity as a threshold concept in fields where it is currently not used.

Note: for other thinkers, primarily those following Catherine Malabou and her notion of destructive plasticity, that might not be the case. In destructive plasticity processes, the system’s identity can be fully eliminated.

14:00–15:30 Panel III – Time & Mind
Moderators: Tamalone van den Eijnden & Dr. Onur Basak
Panel facilitators: Dr. Kjetil Horn Hogstad & Dr. Joost de Jong

This panel delves into the intersections between the mind’s plasticity and experience of time across multiple disciplines and bodies. Our brain’s ability to adapt and reorganize itself not only affects our cognitive and emotional resilience but also shapes our temporal experiences, memory, anticipation, and the narrative construction of self in relation to the environment.  We discussed the plasticity of the mind, and how this relates to our society, e.g., politics and the education system. The concept of time is an integral topic that can be perceived by molecules, organisms, individuals, the Earth, and societies in overlapping and unique ways. Thus, we will examine the relationship between temporal plasticity at different scales.

16:00–17:30 Panel IV – Meaning making across epistemic cultures
Moderators: Dr. Jeff Diamanti & Dr. Abby Waysdorf
Panel facilitators: Alice Iacobone & Prof. Dr. Amanda Boetzkes

This panel invites discussion of the plasticity of meaning-making practices across the faculties from a historical perspective, as well as of the transformations unleashed by contemporary challenges to universal authority – such as the ambivalent ironies of digital culture, post-truth solipsism, and the recognition and study of anthropogenic climate change. How have the distinct epistemic cultures of the humanities and sciences, in particular, shifted in light of the orientation towards future ecologies and social sustainability that shapes much contemporary academic inquiry, even as, at the same time, societal pressures and discourses seek to discredit this line of thought? Or, what epistemic habits have proven impervious to the pressures of planetary life, on the one hand, and post-truth solipsism on the other? What role do digital culture, platform epistemologies, and information accessibility play in current conflicts over meaning and authority? Beyond interdisciplinarity, how have the categories and concepts of meaning adapted to the scales, objects, and normative horizons of a world no longer infinitely secured for human progress? And what lessons do we have from previous epistemic shifts to adequately account for the plasticity of observation, interpretation, and explanation? 

This panel invited a consideration of the place and prospect of plasticity in contemporary debates about the politics of vernacularity, facts and values, authority, and truth claims. Are the logics of nomothetic and ideographic meaning shifting amidst these epistemic pressures?