The Arthur C. Clarke Center

In the twenty-first year of its life, the Foundation embarked on a mission long in preparation: creation of an ARTHUR C. CLARKE CENTER, to Investigate the Reach and Impact of Human Imagination.

The reason: By the middle of the 20th Century, science and technology had become the primary engines of change, allowing humanity unprecedented opportunities to transform nature and society…for good or ill. In the equivalent of a split second as against the awesome age of our solar system, mere mortals had acquired the power to enhance or destroy life on this planet.

As a consequence the Foundation is impelled by Clarke's recurrent theme: mankind's obligation to comprehend and confront its responsibility to the future. The search is on, then, for tools to meet that responsibility. That search is timely, for while man's capacity to shape the future is new, the innate source of that capacity is timeless and ready for lasting academic attention. That source is human imagination, and at the outset of the 21st Century, its consequences for the future have never been more compelling.

In Arthur C. Clarke the human imagination has traveled far in many forms. How does that happen? How far can it go? How does it converge in single individuals, enabling insight, creativity and awesome results along multiple paths? How does the mind become motivated at just the right moment in history?

To search for answers to those questions and more, the Arthur C. Clarke Center will be a focal point for the study of human imagination: to explore its sources; to weigh its consequences in human development, including in the advancement of science, literature, and the arts; to examine and predict how creativity intersects with historical moments; and to discover and encourage individuals of all nations and ages, gifted with exceptional insight.

In this website, we shall report more fully, and routinely, as the Clarke Center is advanced toward a working academic resource.