Allow me to welcome you personally and your entire gathering to Prague Crossroads,
located in the former, church of St Lawrence, long deconsecrated, which was once
part of the Convent of St Anne in the Old Town. Several years ago our foundation,
Vize 97, undertook to reconstruct it and make it available to the public. This was
achieved in the autumn of 2004 after considerable efforts. Our intention is to draw on
Prague's historical tradition as a crossroads of spiritual currents and revive it by
means of cultural and social gatherings of various kinds, as well as inter-religious
meditation, because here the locality radiates its remarkable and mysterious destiny
and its long and turbulent history. It is said that St Wenceslas himself decided to
build a rotunda here, and therefore it is assumed that it was a place that already had a
special status in the pre-Slavonic period, being an intersection of various forces and
influences with metaphysical protection. It may seem strange that I mention it in a
somewhat unscientific fashion in connection with something so rational as a meeting
on the psychological aspects of teaching mathematics. It is my belief, however, that it
should be the ambition not only of this place, but of modem thinking in general, to
emphasise the overlapping and interpenetration of scientific disciplines that were
strictly separated until recently. An over-emphasis on rationality in modem
civilisation stultified conscience – that ambassador of the moral and spiritual order
within us – and with it the sense of responsibility for our actions that transcends by
far the bounds of our physical existence. Only thinking that draws on the wealth of
the manifold sources of human knowledge – without denying the uniqueness and
strengths of any of them – can overcome our transitoriness in this world. I hope that
you will feel at ease in these inspiring surroundings.