The Centre for Social Ontology was based in the College of Humanities at EPFL, its central focus being the Morphogenetic Project. The project’s main theoretical aim was to conceptualise a nascent but unique transformation of the social order towards ‘Morphogenesis Unbound’.

• Margaret Archer led the project ‘From Modernity to Morphogenesis’, as Chair in Social Theory at EPFL.

• Ismael Al-Amoudi’s ISRF project was conducted on the basis of an in-depth ethnographic study of an Occupy! movement that spread in Switzerland in 2011-12. It interrogated the nature and significance of authority in a morphogenic society where social change breeds further change. It considered authority both as a relation of power that is legitimated and as a relation of power that legitimises – that is, a relation of power that makes acceptable social forms that are otherwise unacceptable and vice versa.

• Kate Forbes-Pitt’s interdisciplinary contribution to the Morphogenesis project combined theoretical work in philosophy of science, complexity theory and social theory with extensive practical experience in the application of technology.