The Dead Sea area is unique in the sense that it is a natural laboratory in which key topics in several scientific disciplines can be studied in situ. Processes that take place during continental break-up, geochemistry and dynamics of the hypersaline Dead Sea water, paleoclimate and paleoseismic records in sediments and the survival mechanisms of halophilic micro-organisms are among the topics being studied there. Active tectonic processes control all aspects of the Dead Sea and have created an environment that has also influenced the course of human history.

At the turn of the 20th century, intellectuals and artists in Belgium and the Netherlands were keen to define their respective national identities. One of the most striking ways of doing this was based on a paradox: in both Belgium and the Netherlands the idea came into being that their national distinctiveness actually lay in their being international. What set the Belgians, living in the heart of Europe, apart from the French or the Germans, so the thinking went, was precisely the fact that they were able to understand both the French and the Germans. And what made the Dutch different from the inhabitants of the major powers, it was emphasised, was the fact that they were attentive to the general interest, and not just their own national interest. This article focuses on the history of this remarkable ‘international patriotism’.

During the first half of the 20th century, it was quite common among philosophers – ranging from the logical empiricists to existentialists like Sartre and Heidegger – to regard ethics as beyond rational justification. These tendencies are found even today, mostly among scientists who have not followed the developments in philosophy, but also among postmodernists and some other philosophers who seem to be unaware of what is going on in philosophy today. This paper outlines how the picture has changed from the early part of the century to now. Central figures in this development have been Nelson Goodman, Israel Scheffler and John Rawls. However, many of their ideas were interestingly anticipated by earlier philosophers, notably Edmund Husserl. This essay focuses on the issues rather than on the people. Its aim is to give a fairly accurate picture of the present situation with regard to justification in ethics.

Extinction of widespread species is common in evolutionary time (millions of years) but rare in ecological time (hundreds or thousands of years). In the fossil record, there appears to be a smooth continuum between background and mass extinction; and the clustering of extinctions at mass extinctions cannot be explained by the chance coincidence of independent events. Although some extinction is selective, much is apparently random in that survivors have no recognizable superiority over victims. Extinction certainly plays an important role in evolution, but whether it is constructive or destructive has not yet been determined.

Numerous cases of thesis plagiarism by senior public officials in many European countries have attracted significant public attention in recent years. Such different cases, however, have had different political and legal consequences. This article elucidates some of the cases through the examples of Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Based on the theory of political accountability, it is clarified that the reactions of politicians to the exposure of their plagiarism cases were fundamentally different. Almost no common pattern of reactions can be found in the two countries. It is explained that the only solution in both countries was to adopt legislation allowing subsequent withdrawal of a university degree once acquired.

A brief summary of sociological theories concerning the development of identity states that it emerges through the interactions between individuals and society, implying that the individual is unable to attain an identity in an autonomous manner. An identity is therefore constructed and formed through contact with other individuals, groups and cultures in one’s socio-cultural environment. The concept of symbolic interactionism plays a fundamental role here. Societies establish and form social roles by means of linked expectations. In turn, an individual is introduced to these and is exposed to them throughout their socialisation. They are internalised and emerge as critical elements of identity. Explained another way, there are numerous identities in a society that are already fixed and established. The individual is confronted by those identities and must adapt to them. Individuals are seen as active participants in this process, capable of reflecting on it even constructing it and forming their own identity independently. A tension therefore exists between established social identities and the capacity of individuals to construct their own identities. This is a dynamic process that goes on throughout various life stages and differs according to social milieu. With this is mind; identity may be defined as one’s personal awareness of being a distinctive individual, with a unique life-story and being in constant confrontation with the environment in order to attain a balance between individual claims and the expectations of this environment.1

For the most part, modern China’s institutions and modes of knowledge have been shaped and predominantly influenced by the West. Since the modern Chinese knowledge system is an integral and inseparable part of that dominant western system, an immanent critique will view Chinese problems not as extraneous, but as intrinsic to modernity, to the world-system or globalization. This article traces the genealogy of modern European modes of knowledge under the rubrics of ‘liberal arts’, as the origin and basis for modern China’s institutions and modes of knowledge, and then examines China’s ‘liberal arts’ as institution and modes of knowledge from the early years of the twentieth century to the present. The paper’s objective is to question the relationship between (Eurocentric) universalism and Chinese exceptionalism within the dominant modern Western institutions and modes of knowledge today.

After the collapse of the communist power block in 1989, capital cities such as Budapest, Prague and Warsaw had the best starting positions for the development of their own distinctive post-socialist variant of the international market economy. Since then, however, smaller cities, such as Wrocław – the fourth largest city in Poland in terms of population – have been more creative in devising economic and cultural initiatives and strategies to position the city in both and Eastern and the Western European landscape in a recognizable fashion. One of the themes by means of which Wrocław presents itself is that of a European multicultural border city. The issue concerns the extent to which the myth of a richly stratified multicultural history does justice to the reality of the city's recent turbulent and violent past.

The European Research Council has provided substantial research grants across all disciplines during the period 2007–2013. An analysis of the distribution of the ERC (IDEAS) Starting, Consolidator and Advanced grants shows substantial differences by country. On the one hand, the UK excels in the relative number of awards, in its share among the top receiving institutions, in a high proportion of inwards mobile scholars and in the overall financial gain through ERC as compared with the UK’s contribution to the EU budget. In addition, the Netherlands is among the winners in these respects. On the other hand, Italy fares unfavourably according to these measures. In the search for an explanation of the Italian situation, a comparison is undertaken with other European countries of a similar size. The article arrives at the conclusion that low Italian success in efforts to raise such ERC funds is not due to the low average quality of the Italian education and research system, but rather due to low funding, e.g. to a low proportion of the GDP spent on research.

Post-communist Central and Eastern European legal cultures in general, and judicial style in particular, are often characterized as formalistic. This article reconstructs two ideological narratives about the formalist heritage of CEE judiciary, variants of which have dominated academic and policy debates about rule of law, judicial reforms and European integration in the last three decades. As the debate becomes linked to deeply rooted and long-term, sometimes traumatic issues of national and political identity, patterns of ideological thinking resurface easily. While it is symptomatic of CEE political cultures that the debate on judicial method has become a battleground for fierce controversies about collective (political) identity, arguably this exemplifies a broader phenomenon. Other weak or peripheral national cultures also face and struggle with issues of collective identity and inferiority complexes which may resurface in professional discourses and seemingly unpolitical domains.

During the last two decades a dramatic shift in the production and distribution strategies of TV series has taken place on a global level. This article discusses how these broad changes also led to a transformation in the form and the themes of European crime series, which emerge as ideal objects to study the representation of European societies in contemporary popular culture. The article looks at recent serial crime dramas such as La casa de papel, Suburra, and Peaky Blinders, which have abandoned the classic formula of European crime TV series, usually focused on the figure of the detective and primarily addressed to a national audience. Designed for an international market, these series provocatively concentrate on the figure of the criminal and adopt an explicitly sensationalist approach. The article argues that this style and the bleak depiction of European society in these series are both an expression and a critical representation of the rise of populism across the Old Continent.

This paper looks in detail at the educational side of interdisciplinarity and recounts the philosophy and some practicalities of the implementation of University College London’s successful Bachelor of Arts and Sciences (BASc) degree. In particular, we consider ‘framing’ and ‘the ladder of abstraction’ as notions that are useful in the philosophy of education. It is hoped that some of the ideas, challenges and successes described here will be helpful to others wishing to implement interdisciplinary curricula in their own institutions.

This paper focuses on the linkages between postwar economic and social policy development. Examining the relationship between affluence and levels of welfare over the period as a whole reveals a tendency for social expenditure effort to be higher in moderately affluent then in extremely affluent nations. Turning to the question of how economic growth impacted on welfare expansion in the early postwar decades, the paper argues that growth was a necessary, rather than a sufficient, condition of welfare development. Finally, analysis of the era of welfare containment suggests that domestic economic performance has been the main factor conditioning expenditure change

Since the very beginning of science and philosophy, causality has been a basic category of research. In the theory of dynamical systems, different forms of causality can be distinguished depending on different equations of motion. The question arises how causal relationships can be inferred from observational data. Statistic data analysis often yields information on correlations only, but not on causation. Under special conditions probabilistic distributions of data are connected with causal networks. Causal modeling plays an eminent role in the natural sciences (e.g. physics, chemistry, biology). In engineering sciences, causal dependence must not only be recognized, but constructed and controlled, in order to guarantee reliable and desired functions of technical systems. Control is the inverse problem of causality for engineers. In social sciences, causal networks are used to analyze social and economic interactions in, for example, markets, organizations, and institutions. With respect to volatility shocks and financial crashes, it is a challenge to discover the causes of extreme events. From an epistemic and interdisciplinary point of view, complex nonlinear causal networks are distinguished by universal properties, which are true in natural, technical, and social networks (e.g. scale-invariance, power laws).

Noam Chomsky is an enigma. To many, he is — and has been for 50 years — the most prominent and courageous academic opponent of his country's militarist ambitions around the globe. Yet among those who admire him on that score, few find it easy to relate to his seemingly obscure theories about language. The academic community acclaims Chomsky as the principal inspiration behind the so-called ‘cognitive revolution’ in psychology and related sciences — an intellectual development reflecting corporate pressures and initially sponsored by the United States military. This article investigates the paradoxical relationship between Chomsky's political activism and his science.

Large quoted corporations have become increasingly visible through the media. As a result, such corporations have become role models for other types of organizations. Even universities face pressures to act like these corporations. This paper demonstrates that there are fundamental differences between corporations and universities, particularly in terms of history, products, objectives, and principals. These differences, it is argued, have significant implications for the leadership of universities.

Cultural actions are among the best tools for ministries of foreign affairs worldwide. Many countries who choose to work with cultural actions could potentially reach millions of citizens, inclusive of those living in remote areas. One of these cultural actions is that of establishing and opening cultural centres. This paper presents libraries as providing outstanding service in all these centres. Through a historical and numerical analysis of the libraries of The British Council, the Alliance Française’s Institut Français, the Goethe Institut and the Cervantes Institute, it can be shown that libraries are a real tool for public diplomacy that can exceed its remit of social assistance, social services and education. To conclude, this paper will also look at actions that could be undertaken to improve and cater for network libraries.