The first Institute for Advanced Study was founded in Princeton, New Jersey in 1930. Several other institutes followed, both in America, Europe and, more recently, in Asia and Africa. This paper is not a history of such institutes, but is about the idea of an Institute for Advanced Study. Like John Henry Newman in his famous book, The Idea of a University, it offers some general reflections on education, science and art and their interrelationship. It underlines the importance of these institutes in an academic world increasingly dominated by notions of measured output and impact and of policies imposed from ‘above’.

This paper sets out the limitations of knowledge from the past and the ways that knowledge can be used. The first part deals with the extent to which the past can be known and raises questions about the survival of evidence and also about the ways evidence is interpreted. The second part looks briefly at possible uses of the past and suggests, in particular, the importance of new interpretations challenging the received wisdom and thus giving societies new ways of looking at themselves and their histories.

Numerous outbreaks of a disease whose most prominent effects were gangrene and loss of limbs occurred in Europe in the Middle Ages. Sufferers sought relief at the shrine of St Anthony at Vienne in France. Quite early, it was recognized that the disease was a poisoning due to the consumption of bread prepared from rye contaminated with the fungus ergot. Many interesting substances have been isolated from ergot, some of which are used in medicine in migraine and in childbirth, but the most dramatic substance derived from ergot is LSD. The circumstance of some of these discoveries is recounted.

In recent historiography, it has been argued that the expansion of Europe between 1500 and 1800 created a ‘system’ in the Atlantic by which the economies of Europe, West Africa and the New World were closely interconnected by trade and migration. However, the available evidence suggests that the economic implications of such a system were of marginal importance. Rather than boosting the economy, the ‘Atlantic System’ stimulated the expansion of European values and norms, such as private property, monogamy, the nuclear family, free labour and the place of women and children in society.

Weimar Germany was a great period in scientific development in which Jews played a prominent role. However, Nazi anti-Jewish policies led to the dismissal of many staff members and directors of the institutes of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, who were forced to go abroad. In their new environment they became major leaders in science – notably in the new branches such as molecular biology – with a continuing loss to Germany.

Journalists are often blamed for producing scare stories. It seems to have been forgotten that many, perhaps most, modern scare stories are based on scientific risk calculations, and that journalists are not trained in scaring the wits out of people in that particular way. A more precise accusation might be that journalists are eager, unthinking and unquestioning conveyors of results from scientific risk calculations. Calculation of risk has become an important research product; a product fitting nicely into conventional journalistic storytelling, but the concept of risk tends to dilute value disagreement and conflict of interests into seemingly purely factual issues, leaving little room for political debate. Moreover, the cargo attitude of journalism is in conflict with the journalistic ideal of critical investigation and analysis on behalf of the public to stimulate common deliberation in the public sphere. Apparently, the production of scientific knowledge is excluded from the public sphere. Regarding discussions on science and technology, journalists will have to enquire into aspects of facts, values and social interests to live up to the ideal of investigation on behalf of the public. Several obstacles along this path can be identified, one of them being the commercialization of journalism in the media-industry and of scientific research in the knowledge-industry. Universities, in the search for a meaning of life, might consider providing a home for independent, reflexive journalism on science in a social context.

People need socially accredited but disinterested experts to give them reliable advice about risks. Traditionally, this role has been performed by academics, but academia is coming increasingly under the influence of commercial and political interests. How can ‘post-academic’ science be shaped to sustain its vital role as an independent organ of civil society?

The human species is beset by ‘risks’; one of which is related to its exposed position on the Earth as it travels through cosmic space. An examination is made of the major risks – those associated with cometary impact, with solar emissions and with the explosions of nearby stars. Estimates are given of the risks associated with trying to avoid the effect of these phenomena. Not surprisingly it is concluded that more work is necessary.

Over the last few years, the regulatory system for GM foods and crops in Europe has ground to a halt because of the difficulty in reaching agreement. Regulators, in struggling to overcome the distrust and suspicion that has greeted GM soya in particular, have introduced a new mantra: transparency, accountability and inclusivity. I argue in this paper that this mantra, although a considerable advance on what has gone before, will not solve all our problems; basically, because such procedures can only partially deal with the loss of trust and the climate of suspicion in which we now working. Some suggestions are made as to what we should do next.

All forms of terror seem to aim at the destruction of the individual experience and judgement of people. Part of our world is threatened by political terror (as represented first by Dostoevsky) or ethnic and cultural terror (as convincingly described by J. M. Coetzee), but it seems possible, at least in principle, to find an answer to these threats. Is religion the primary remedy against nihilism and, therefore, also against terrorism as Dostoevsky believes? Or is the quasi or semi-autonomous self the major antagonist of terrorism? The genetic manipulation of the human race, as sketched by Michel Houellebecq in his novel Les Particules élémentaires (1998), holds a threat that is irreversible. The cloning of human beings, which supposedly offers a solution to many of our problems, seems too high a risk to take.

This paper addresses the general question of the role of emotions in risk management, with an application to the siting of a repository for spent nuclear fuel. Although it is true that such siting has been very difficult to carry out without meeting with strong local opposition, there are some exceptions in recent Swedish experience. This recent experience constitutes an occasion for reconsidering the received message from risk perception research since the 1970s. This research has purportedly demonstrated a very strong impact of emotional processes on risk attitudes, which in turn is supposed to imply that these attitudes are rigid and unchangeable. However, when this assertion is looked at more closely, it is found that a number of questionable assumptions and overly strong generalizations have been made. The central role played by the concept of ‘dread’ is particularly important. Dread, or a ‘gut reaction’, is by no means demonstrated in the traditional selection of hazard attributes, which contain such dimensions as concern for future generations or voluntariness. Such dimensions may have a relationship to emotional processes but they are not emotional per se and their emotional significance remains to be documented. The items that do measure emotional reactions directly, by asking about fear and anxiety, are found in data on nuclear waste repository siting to have only a weak influence on policy attitudes. The most important weight is instead carried by items measuring the ‘expected severity of consequences’. The argument is, in a concluding section, carried to the level of attitudes to technologies, which may or may not be related to perceived risk. It is found that an important role is played by substitutability of a technology. If people see no good substitute for a technology that has important benefits, they are ready to accept the risks. The current situation in Sweden with regard to nuclear power can be understood in this light, since no realistic alternatives are available.