Consilience is the linking together of research, technological innovation, educational goals, and business ventures across cultures and across disciplines in order to create a common groundwork for shared understanding. Hence the motto that best exemplifies the spirit of this collaborative endeavor is:

A cooperative pursuit of consilience in pure and applied knowledge, whose aim is to serve and sustain the material and spiritual development of both cultures, while avoiding doing injury to our planet as a viable ecosystem.

The Einstein Institutes were conceived for the purpose of pursuing this goal.

Ecological Validity of the Endeavor. There are many centers and institutes throughout the world that specialize in either science, technology, social issues, humanities, or the arts, but there is no single interdisciplinary center that incorporates all such dimensions. The uniqueness of the Einstein Institute experiment is that while attacking fundamental problems in basic science, and needs for technological innovation and cultural advancement, we are mindful of the implications these endeavors have for both the natural and social ecology. In this way overarching social issues might be addressed so critical thinking and problem solving are made less rigid and less compartmentalized.

Thus the shared focus of the Einstein Institutes is "ecological" in the broadest sense. Scientific research, graduate training, technological invention, social studies, and artistic expression belong to the same evolved natural and cultural environments. Although different humans activities take place in a variety of socially defined econiches, they are all supported by one world ecosystem. Intellectual, material, and spiritual endeavors have evolved in concert with biological functions and drawn on the same resources.

Because this is so, it seems eminently reasonable and incredibly exciting that we recognize that human endeavors are fundamentally ecological. Ecological psychology, ecological biology, and ecological physics, terms that aptly define the scope of the Einstein Institute-promise that a high degree of rigor can be brought to a wide range of questions that otherwise remain isolated, ambiguous, and thorny. Indeed, all intellectual and social endeavors are rendered consilient under the rubric of this modern theme.

Background. The Visva-Bharati University at Shantiniketan, India, (founded in 1918 near Calcutta) was established by the efforts of Rabindranath Tagore, Asia's first Nobel Laureate (1913), to be India's International University, where East and West might began a fruitful collaboration. The name of the university is a Sanskrit compound referring both to the universe and to learning. Even more fundamental, according to Tagore, was the idea that this international university in India become "a rendezvous for Western and Asian scholars and a conduit between Asia's past and present, so that the ancient learning might be rejuvenated through contact with modern thinking." Hence the university's motto is "Where the whole world meets in one nest."

This idea was enthusiastically supported by numerous Western scholars and dignitaries-among them Einstein, Freud, and W. B Yeats, the Irish poet-with Gandhi being a principle fund raiser and the U. S. a principal contributor (along with Germany and Japan). Einstein's close work with S. N. Bose (e.g., Bose-Einstein statistics), the Indian physicist and the Vice-Chancellor of Tagore's University, makes the name chosen for this institute particularly appropriate. India can now boast of institutes of higher learning commemorating both Einstein and Bose.

Why the Initial Focus on India? "Unity in diversity," Prime Minister Nehru's apt characterization of India and "Melting pot of the world," the oft used sobriquet for America, apropos of Germany as well, recognizes a deep similarity and shared strength of the cultures-their multinational origins and ethnic texture. America and Germany are leading democracies in the West while India is the oldest and most populous continuous democracy in the East (one sixth of the world's population with the largest middle class, 250 million). There are also dramatic differences. While America and Germany's materialist, practical pursuits have resulted in two of the world's richest economies, progress toward the ideal goal of science education for all is less than the ideal desired. By contrast India's idealism has produced, through an economy of means, a remarkable intellectual prosperity-one that is producing an increasing scientific and engineering workforce much needed and widely used in the West.

Through a carefully orchestrated collaboration of international resource centers, spearheaded by the Einstein Institutes, we hope to produce a kind of "spiritual materialism"-a shared philosophy that would serve the participating nations well and bring them into greater harmony than ever before. The Einstein Institutes can provide bridges among the nations by which joint work toward realization of this grand but practical goal might be made feasible. The University of Connecticut has elected to join partnership with its counterparts in India and Germany to promote this Indo-Germany-US collaboration. UConn is the home of the Asian American Studies Institute which is the northeast sponsor for the society for Friends of Visva-Bharati -whose aim is to propagate, popularize, and, thereby, to create an awareness among people from different walks of life of the ideals of Visva-Bharati as originally promoted by Tagore: Those whom you leave behind, will continually pull you down.

Specific Aims.
The joint work of the Einstein Institutes will be:

First, to identify a consortium of resources in West and the East (training programs, research projects, technology laboratories, businesses, and cultural centers) willing to work together to promote and sustain long range collaboration on scientific, technological, business, and cultural projects of mutual interest.

Second, to provide the information and assistance required to marshal resources, talent, and funds for such projects that will help them achieve their collaborative goals.
Third, to help the involved institutions to organize and administer a joint graduate training program whose aim is excellence in their chosen areas of concentration while serving the larger interdisciplinary goal of seeking consilience of pure and applied knowledge in the sciences, humanities, and the arts.

Mutual Benefits. The general benefits of this cooperative endeavor for such collaborations are apparent: On the one hand, India receives help from the West in strengthening its educational, technological, and scientific infrastructure while building working relationships with partners in the West. The West, on the other hand, receives access to an enormous pool of intellectually talented scientists, scholars, and students, as well as potential partnerships with resident experts on South Asian economical, cultural and natural resources. Here the role of the Einstein Institute is to act as a catalyst and broker for collaborations appropriate to its mission and resources. This will foster a fuller understanding of the common needs of both cultures and a deeper appreciation of the value of their differences and uniqueness.

The Advantages of Multiple Institutes. An international network of Einstein Institutes will reap important benefits not available to one alone.

First, a local administrative focus allows the Institution in each country to select its goals and shape its activities in ways tailored to the resources and demands of its home environment.

Second, participants in its programs in each country are provided an administrative conduit to facilitate communication and coordination with their collaborators on the other side of the world.

Third, coordinated administrative planning will facilitate sharing of information about projects, under way, planned, or envisioned, make locating potential collaborators in the other countries easier, provide new and efficient access routes to relevant national resources, and, finally, provide a wider range of eligibility for potential funding sources.
In sum, the expert advice and administrative help at the various sites will likely catalyze new collaborative efforts; it will also provide trouble-shooting at either end that make initiating new collaborations easier and sustaining on-going ones more likely.

The administrative philosophy of "different sites serving one idea" is, of course, common practice for multinational endeavors and has proven its strategic worth on many fronts. Working together the Einstein Institutes can dramatically increase the size of the consortium of autonomous research centers and training programs to serve the cooperative effort. By mutual consent and common effort, the Institutes will help bring together a developing part of the world with more developed nations to form a synergy that will significantly increase productivity.

Services to be Performed as Funding Allows. The Einstein Institutes will provide the following services to its participants:

• To build a consortium among laboratories in the West and East that agree to be resources for a collaborative program of research and/or training.
• To write grants to secure support for its activities, services, research projects, and training and exchange programs
• To help select and administer the Einstein fellowships with the participating graduate programs, institutes, centers, and laboratories.
• To act as a matchmaker between researchers in the two countries who wish to collaborate under the auspices of the Einstein Institutes and the consortium of participating facilities.
• To provide e-mail and web information (e.g., directories of addresses, specialties, and publications) to help in establishing and maintaining communications among the participants in the Institute's programs.
• To organize conferences and symposia at national and international conferences that will provide a forum for the work of the Institutes' students and faculty.
• To produce a series of technical reports that advertise and archive the work of the Institute's members and associates.
• To unite with other worldwide efforts that share the common goals of consilience through cooperative knowledge management; to promote functional literacy for all through public educational, community sponsored and self-study programs; and to work toward the sustainability of our planet as a viable ecosystem.

Coordination of Effort. The functional integrity of the enterprise will derive from shared objectives, a partnering of resources, and coordinated management among its administrative offices in the various countries. A liaison will be established among the Einstein Institutes to help ensure coordination of their individual efforts. A common policy for their pursuits will be established by the actions of the Einstein World Council Foundation with representatives from the Coordinating Committees of each Einstein Institute and under the advice of leading experts from around the world.