Conformity to observations takes on a particular significance in relation to weather prediction. Day-to-day weather changes constitute the temporal evolution of a complex and highly chaotic system, and yet the accuracy of weather forecasts can be, and are, readily and regularly assessed by both practitioners and the general public. Here, the development of weather prediction is portrayed against the backcloth of the role played by the criterion of ‘conformity to observations’ in regulating progress. It has served as a crude banner for castigating an early attempt at forecasting, sustaining an empirically-based but theoretically unsupported approach, summarily dismissing some attempts and yet ignored in another. In more recent developments the criterion has been both deliberately and justifiably weakened, and even turned on its head.

The literature about global democracy deals with two different types of democratization: Type 1 is about spreading democracy across sovereign states as the basis for good governance. It focuses on the quality of the state/society-nexus: the balance between coercion, reward and identity. Type 2 is about democratizing world politics as such. In its most concrete expressions it focuses on the relationship between international society (a community of states) and world society (a community of people). The contemporary structure of multilevel governance provides the rationale behind this: national democracies are ineffective in controlling essential centres of power. This implies a need to scale up democracy to global proportions. However, in Type 1 considerations the term democracy often is an empty shell. This blinds observers for checks and balances and types of pluralism in non-democratic states. It also blinds them for misuse of democratic claims in democratic states. Aspiring global democracy in terms of Type 2 ignores that the presence of a central authority is a precondition inherent to the concept of democracy. Democratic theory cannot escape and is consequently caught up in its preconditions of a people (demos) and a government (cratos).

John Rawls construed the Theory of Justice as central to political philosophy, and defended a series of purportedly egalitarian versions of such a theory. This essay points out that Rawls' philosophy became increasingly influential during precisely that period in recent history – the last quarter of the 20th century – in which global inequality increased most dramatically, and explores some possible explanations of this peculiar fact. It concludes by arguing that methodological defects make his approach fundamentally misguided: early versions of his theory are too abstract to be of relevance to understanding politics or as guides to action, and later ones too parochial.

The Dutch historian Johan Huizinga, who lived from 1872 to 1945, is considered to be one of the greatest historians of the 20th century. His work has been translated into many languages. More than 80 years after its first appearance, his most famous book, The Waning of the Middle Ages, is still read the world over and regularly reprinted. Huizinga is now mainly read and admired by historians, although his book, Homo ludens, is also appreciated by anthropologists. In the 1930s, he was even more well-known but in a different capacity: not as a cultural historian but as a cultural critic. His book, In the Shadows of Tomorrow, which appeared in 1935, was soon translated into eight languages. It was as influential as Ortega y Gasset's, The Rebellion of the Masses, and made him ‘the most famous man of the Netherlands’. This paper will describe Johan Huizinga's transition from cultural historian to cultural critic and discuss how far his cultural criticism can be seen as an example of ‘the spirit of the 1930's’.

Although the notion of God as the legislator of nature was already known in the Jewish-Christian tradition, the modern concept of laws of nature was established only in the seventeenth-century mechanical philosophy of nature, particularly by Descartes and Newton, and remained largely confined to that tradition before it became seriously questioned in quantum mechanics. After a brief historical survey, I first discuss various examples of so-called laws of nature in chemistry and physical chemistry proposed in the nineteenth century to conclude that none of them really correspond to the original concept, but that they rather comprise a variety of epistemologically different statements. More recent philosophical approaches to extend the concept of laws, so as to cover chemical cases, all result in inacceptable consequences. The deeper reason of the comparatively little importance of natural laws, I finally argue, is that chemistry as the original epitome of the experimental or Baconian science has largely followed methodological pluralism in which a variety of models to be chosen from for pragmatic reasons are preferred over universal laws of nature as in mathematical physics.

TOPO-EUROPE is a multidisciplinary international research program that addresses the interaction of processes inherent to the deep Earth (lithosphere, mantle) with surface processes (erosion, climate, sea level), which together shaped the topography of Europe. The objective of the TOPO-EUROPE project is to assess neotectonic deformation rates and to quantify related geo-risks, such as earthquakes, flooding, landslides, rock falls and volcanism. Research, incorporating iterative data interactive modelling, focuses on the lithosphere memory and neotectonics, with special attention on the thermo-mechanical structure of the lithosphere, mechanisms controlling large-scale plate boundary and intraplate deformations, anomalous subsidence and uplift, and links with surface processes and topography evolution. The TOPO-EUROPE natural laboratories, in which these processes are analysed, cover a wide range of geodynamic settings. These include the post-collisional Alpine/Carpathian/Pannonian-Basin system, the very active Aegean-Anatolian and Apennines-Tyrrhenian orogens and back-arc basins, the Caucasus-Levant area in the Arabia-Europe collision zone, the Iberian Peninsula caught up between Alpine orogens, the meta-stable West and Central European Platform, the stable East-European Platform and the seismically active and elevated Scandinavian continental margin. The TOPO-EUROPE project is a component of the International Lithosphere Program and was initiated with the support of Academia Europaea. A European Science Foundation EUROCORES project provides funding for part of the TOPO-EUROPE research. Other parts of TOPO-EUROPE require support by participating organizations.

The growth of continuously generated, large-scale datasets, and new analytics to handle them, has created expectations, in some quarters, that new insights can be generated that will help us address the biggest challenges that face us as a species and therefore can shape future societal outcomes. It is hoped that these new technologies will lead not just to new discoveries but also to new questions and thinking that will deliver significant scientific advances. Perhaps there will be some genuine scientific advances but since many of the challenges that face us reside in the human world and depend upon how humans behave, we need to turn to the humanities and the social sciences as well as the natural sciences and look at the role Big Data could play there in adding to, or shaping, our future. And here, what concerns us is not just the assumptions guiding the new analytic techniques for data mining, data merging, linking and analysis, born out of smarter AI algorithms, it is a more fundamental issue about the constraints and limitations of the kind of data inputs and outputs being appealed to in Big Data systems and whether they are well served to provide an understanding of the human world.

The first pogrom documented in history took place in Alexandria in the year 38 CE. The only document describing this event is an eyewitness account by the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria. It is a problematic source because the concern of the author is largely theological and also because he fails to inform the reader about the causes of the violence. These causes must be sought in the combination of a growing tendency among Alexandrian intellectuals to depict Jews as criminal misanthropes, and the Jewish tendency to side with the Roman occupiers of Egypt.

Social and cultural changes that have taken place since the 1960s have had a major impact, in particular on the lives of young adults, but they have also affected the living conditions and opportunities of older adults. The presentation of a selection of relevant data about elderly people's demographic position in different countries of Europe is central in the second section. In the final section results of a Dutch survey are provided and information about new flexible forms of living arrangements when starting a new partner relationship after the age of fifty, are presented and discussed

This introduction gives a brief account of the conceptual framework and the topics of the case studies, especially the connection between the psychological concept of trauma applied in the social sciences and the characteristics of the historical analysis of traumatic events or processes, the link between the patterns of consolidation and the regimes of memory, and the context of the chosen case studies of this focus.

Post-humanism has recently come to China and challenges traditional humanism and the humanities. The author first offers a reflection on the evolution of humanism in modern Chinese intellectual history. To the author, we are now in a ‘post-theoretical era’, in which the function of theory is no longer so powerful and ubiquitous as it used to be. It is then argued that the rise of the ‘post-humanist’ trend in the West during the past decades indicates that, in the present era, humankind is only one of many species on earth, whose existence and development, to a large extent, depend on natural law. At the same time, post-humanism tells us that humankind may no longer be able to control some of its own creations. The author concludes by calling for digital humanities to bridge the gap between science and humanities and to establish a new relationship between the two.

Jürgen Habermas’ recent work attempts to find ‘inspiring energy’ in the religious traditions, but without disturbing the rationality and freedoms of enlightenment modernity. Rather, the secular would assimilate the religious like a blood infusion, becoming more vibrant and stronger, but not losing its hard-won advantage. For Habermas, the post-secular problem lies in how best to preserve the secular democratic institutions, and keep them from being ‘violated’ through religiously motivated politics. Habermas criticizes Nicholas Wolterstorff, who would allow the religious to overrun the political, potentially violating vulnerable democratic institutions such as the parliament. Habermas suggests use of an ‘institutional filter’ to protect parliament from violation. Throughout his post-secular writings, he persistently employs Victorian-like innuendo bestowing masculine ‘inspiring energy’, ‘vitality’, and danger onto religion, which runs the risk of ‘violating’ effeminate democratic institutions symbolized by the parliament; thus the prophylactic device, the ‘filter’, which protects her virtue. One is reminded of Christo's and Jeanne-Claude's ‘Wrapped Reichstag’: in contrast to the Bundestag of today, with its glass dome (representing transparency) open to the public, we find in Christo's and Jeanne-Claude's work an enclosed, protective environment, a filter or prophylactic. In this vein, this paper will attempt to tease out from the language, word-choice, metaphors, and discourse of Habermas’ (post)secular dialectics that the religious enters solely on terms set by the secular, and plurality solely on terms set by stability/security.

We are beginning to understand how the brain is organized and works, how it evolved in the remote past and how it continually forms during the embryonic development of individual organisms. The study of the brain and its activity has recently advanced at an accelerating pace thanks to the convergence of a number of research strategies. At least three research lines occupy a particular position among these strategies: genetics and the molecular biology of neural cells and the central nervous system; cognitive science; and brain imaging. If the brain is the subject of biological studies at the cellular, intercellular and circuitry levels, the approach to the study of mind should be more subtle. Nonetheless, science has progressed a long way in this direction. Some recent advances in this field are briefly reviewed here, with particular emphasis on brain evolution and development, the role of sensory organs, coding and the processing of sensorial information, memory, rationality, meaning and consciousness.

To investigate the identity attributes of Turkish people living in France it is necessary to consider ‘Turkish identity’, determine the stage of their identity building, and understand the role religion plays in this quest for identity. Considering the complex structure of Ottoman society and the multiple and dynamic properties of loyalty criteria, it is difficult to ascertain the definition of ‘Turkishness’ even in Turkey. It is probably not necessary to explain that this is even more difficult for Turks who are in the minority.

Crime fiction is currently one of the most globalized, most popular, and biggest-selling of commercial genres, but there has been almost no attempt to study it in relation to other kinds of post-colonial literature. There is no bibliography of crime writers as ‘post-colonial’, and no attempt to generalize about a body of fiction. This paper is a brief extract from work in progress, based on the books of over fifty Anglophone or Francophone authors who might be categorized as ‘post-colonial’ by birth or residence. I test post-colonial theory against crime fiction, to argue that strong generic conventions call into question some of that theory's received ideas. I consider two linked problems: first, so-called ‘colonial mimicry’ and its obverse, ‘ventriloquism’, because it seems to me a wrong turning in 20th-century criticism; and, second, the demand for new literatures which would create ‘national identities’. I argue that ‘mimicry’ makes no sense in the context of a strong popular genre, and that accusations of ‘colonial mimicry’ reinscribe the asymmetries of judgement they appear to attack. The possibility of imagined geopolitical units as identity-forming, especially in genres which are informed by social criticism, calls into question the demand for literature as a source of national identity.

There have been dozens of interpretations of Las Meninas but most critics assume that either the Royal couple, or their portrait in the Velazquez's large canvas shown in the picture, is actually reflected on a back mirror. I shall provide evidence, however, to support the view that this mirror never existed. And there is no evidence whatsoever that the double portrait was ever painted. In view of these facts I shall make a new proposal about the way the picture was painted and about the painter's intentions. I shall show evidence that the king was adamant that he did not want his portrait painted, since he did not want to show his age (he was more than double the age of his queen). It is thus reasonable to assume that Velázquez, in order to assuage the King's qualms, created the mirror, thus allowing him to produce a very diffuse picture of the royal couple, where no evidence of aging could possibly be discerned.

In this paper I would like to draw on some of the European Science Foundation's past and present initiatives to illustrate how we might build on its strengths – and overcome its weaknesses – in order to capitalize on European scientific potential during one of the most important periods in Europe's recent history. In effect, I would like to set out my personal vision for the European Science Foundation (ESF). This is certainly a fitting time to be looking forward. We are not only on the brink of a new millennium, the ESF is also celebrating its 25th anniversary this year and should take stock of its past achievements and assess how these can be used to enhance European science over the next two and half decades. More crucially, Europe's social, political and economic landscape is undergoing one of its most radical upheavals, spearheaded by the euro and other facets of European union. These developments will inevitably have a major impact on how science is organized, funded and conducted. Like it or not, science is inextricably linked to Europe's socio-economic environment. The challenge is to develop a strategy, and the associated structures and resources, to place science at the heart of the ‘new Europe’.

Linguistic obstacles to common European Union action are overcome by a system of official languages (currently 11) for translation of official texts and interpretation at meetings. In practice, flexibility in language use is frequently required. Here, political tensions arise because of the onward march of English as a language of European Union dialogue; some Member States feel the status of their language is being threatened. In this context, education, culture and other programmes having language provisions can have a compensatory role: their multilingual approach reinforces the cohesion of the Union. Their significance will be even greater if enlargement brings 11 further languages into the Union.