Tertulia brings together leaders from various fields to discuss Uncertainty

The Porto Regional Centre has been organising, for about 10 years, a "Tertulia" with several guests, from different fields of expertise, which aims to analyse and discuss relevant issues for Portuguese society. 

After an interruption due to the pandemic, when it functioned online, the Tertulia resumed the face-to-face model. At the same time, it also brought some changes compatible with the purpose of always: to promote the debate, free, of ideas not necessarily conventional.

The Tertulia seeks to bring the contribution of various disciplinary areas cultivated at the Porto Regional Centre (CRP) of the Universidade Católica Portuguesa: law, psychology, arts, theology, biotechnology, life sciences.

In the current context, the theme had to be Uncertainty. The title for the meeting was provocative: "Glossary of Uncertainty: to foresee is not...". After the initial interventions of the Pro-Rector of the Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Isabel Braga da Cruz, and the Director of the Faculty of Biotechnology and hostess of the session, Paula Castro, the Tertulia developed from the interventions of Alberto Castro and José Pintos dos Santos, the coordinators of this initiative.

Quoting Marquês de Maricá, a 19th century Brazilian philosopher, Alberto Castro states that "people generally prefer deceit, which reassures them, to uncertainty, which bothers them". "To deal with the challenges and unknowns that the future holds, it is necessary to realise that the appropriate response will be substantially different depending on whether we are talking about risks, more or less quantifiable, or situations of absolute uncertainty ("unknown unknowns"). This is certain! Let's not fool ourselves!".