The end of the cold war exposed the tendency in the European state system for those ‘great powers’ which might have been expected to manage the system to become steadily more reluctant to accept the commitment this requires, in terms of responsibility for the security of other states. The West had not sought the collapse of European communism and was, in many ways, comfortable with the stable framework provided by the cold war.

The ‘contract of 1990’ is identified as the means of managing the transition, as Moscow was persuaded to tolerate German unification within NATO and retreat from its Empire in return for reassurances from the West that these changes would not be exploited. Many recent problems can be understood in terms of the need to renegotiate this contract.

In recent decades, psychologists have become increasingly interested in our ability to speak. This paper sketches the present theoretical perspective on this most complex skill of homo sapiens. The generation of fluent speech is based on the interaction of various processing components. These mechanisms are highly specialized, dedicated to performing specific subroutines, such as retrieving appropriate words, generating morpho-syntactic structure, computing the phonological target shape of syllables, words, phrases and whole utterances, and creating and executing articulatory programmes. As in any complex skill, there is a self-monitoring mechanism that checks the output. These component processes are targets of increasingly sophisticated experimental research, of which this paper presents a few salient examples.

This article discusses the concept of ‘Enlightenment’. Many historians of ideas use it in such a vague way that it loses its meaning, for instance to characterize an oppositional attitude no matter when it occurred, or just as a chronological epoch (meaning the whole 18th century). Therefore, it is preferable to have a more distinct definition, based on the French Enlightenment as the main movement. The question of a Swedish Enlightenment is discussed within this framework.

If information enters memory under the influence of a memory-enhancing substance, for about 16 hours thereafter the recollection of that information is no better than if it had been acquired without any treatment. Later tests of retention, however, performed one or more days, or even weeks, after the experience, show a drug-induced improvement of memory. Memory-enhancing compounds thus appear to facilitate the formation of the long-term memory trace. On the assumption that differences between treated and untreated animals emerge from that moment on when memory is based on the products of the processes modulated by the drugs, it can be postulated that long-term memory comes into play after about 16–20 hours.

There was little science policy in the past. Science and technology developed at their own pace. Science policy is now required, not just on grounds of the cost of science, but also because problems of esthetics and of environmental externalities are raised. There are also questions posed by the recruitment of scientists, the structure of research and, above all, priorities in scientific development. There has also to be an analysis of the level—regional, national, plurinational, worldwide—at which decisions on science should be taken. If this is not done through science policy, decisions will be taken entirely haphazardly.

An integrated science and technology policy is both complex and urgent. We have gradually come to understand that the relationship between science and technology is not neat and linear: it is not a case of first some basic science; thereafter some design and development; and then products, profits and the end to unemployment! A comprehensive science and technology policy is not a matter which is internal to science and technology, it also lies within the domain of several of the social sciences. This article reflects, in some generality, upon the relationship between the social and natural sciences, and examines some of the differences and similarities in methods and models as used by the social and natural sciences.

New Technology may have unintended and even negative impacts. This article explores some new approaches in policy analysis of socio-technical networks aimed at improving foresight for technological advances.

By looking at science as a search process, disciplinary demarcations become secondary, and new combinations—which occur all the time—can be better recognized. The practices of natural science contain social science components (to discipline the world) and humanities components (telling of stories), and the quality of these components can be enhanced. The search perspective unifies science and scholarship; the important differences are not between natural science, social science and humanities, but between ‘grammar’, ‘(hi)story’ and ‘nomology’, three ideal–typical approaches in search processes. Existing scientific/scholarly developments and new combinations can be located on this map. An integrated science policy should create a stimulating environment for new combinations.

This paper highlights the process of selecting a long term research agenda in the environmental-development field. What are the criteria to be used for the understanding of what is important in our phase of history? In order to dwell on this process somewhat from the outside, the entry-point chosen is Columbus' world and challenges 500 years ago. In his time the problem was not environmental issues; however, at a more general level an analysis of the interplay between what is supposed to be known, the ideological connotations, the political ambitions, and the economical and technical capacities, provide interesting parallels to our time.