There is no culture that is both general throughout Europe and unique to Europe. So we cannot speak of a ‘European civilization’ in the same sense as in phrases such as ‘Chinese civilization’ or ‘Jewish civilization’ or ‘French civilization’. It is therefore prudent not to appeal to the concept of a European civilization in an attempt to justify the attempt to create a European Union or to accelerate the process of Europe-wide state-building. Nor should we feel constrained by such a concept: the future of a European Union should not be influenced by current or traditional ideas of what European civilization is, since such ideas are mistaken: it can be as protean and pluralistic as we wish to make it.

After the collapse of communism, the Central and Eastern European countries decided to implement a market economy embedded in a democratic order. A constituent element of the transition was a fully-fledged integration with the global economy. One of the consequences of this integration is that the countries are now severely hit by the financial crisis. Until recently, however, it all looked flourishing and economic growth figures indicated a steady catch up with average welfare levels in the European Union (EU). On the website of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development an essay competition was launched for those who were born in 1989. In an introductory statement, a Russian joke is quoted: ‘Everything the Communists told us about communism was a complete and utter lie. Unfortunately, everything the Communists told us about capitalism turned out to be true’.1 This article addresses the impact of the financial crisis in Central and Eastern Europe and in essence starts from this quote. It seeks to explain the extent to which the financial crisis in the Central and Eastern Europe question reveals the downside of a capitalist system embedded in a global economic order.

This paper deals with the transfer of Arab visual theory in the Middle Ages, as it is believed that the cultural significance of this transfer needs a new emphasis. Mathematical perspective was invented in Florentine Renaissance Art. However, except in the history of science, it is a little known fact that this visual theory was based on the Book of Optics, written by Ibn al Haithan, also known as Alhazen, and was translated, probably in Spain, with the Latin title Perspectiva. We therefore can speak of a double history of perspective, as visual theory and as pictorial theory. The main argument is to identify the importance of images, which separate Arab thought from Western thinking. It was the transformation of mathematics into art, in the Western sense, that allows us to distinguish two different cultures. In this process, the invention of mathematical space by Biagio Pelacani was an important step. Thereafter, the gaze and its looking space became a new concern of the Renaissance.

This Plenary Lecture summarizes the seismicity of Mars recorded by the NASA InSight mission, which landed on Elysium Planitia on 26 August 2018. Equipped with a highly sensitive seismometer, the lander has been successfully recording the seismicity of Mars for over three years. Different types of marsquakes have been identified, including low-frequency events with mantle-going phases and shallow high-frequency events characterized by crustal propagation. More recently, a few meteoric impacts have also been identified. Over a thousand events have been recorded, with magnitudes reaching up to MW 4.7. Here we review the techniques used by the MarsQuake Service to locate and characterize marsquakes and the active crustal processes in different areas of the red planet, and we discuss the different types of marsquakes.

Symmetry and chemistry have been in a fruitful interplay, initially in spectroscopy and crystallography, lately in more traditional domains of chemistry, such as reactivity and conformational analysis. A simple phenomenological approach suffices to get an idea about the symmetries of molecules whereas group theoretical approach greatly facilitates the understanding of molecular vibrations, electronic structure, and the mechanism of chemical reactions. In our discussion, the multi-level relationship between symmetry and chemistry is demonstrated by a sampler of examples, including the variations of symmetry of free molecules and molecular packing in crystals. Symmetry considerations continue to assist chemistry in systematizing and interpreting observations and also in discovering new reactions, molecules, and other materials.

This paper is based on recent research into the small, highly endangered language Giernesiei1 (Guernsey, Channel Islands).2 Language documentation has found unexpectedly rich variation and change in Giernesiei usage, not all of which can be accounted for by regional and age-related factors. At the same time, our research into language ideologies and efforts to maintain and revitalise Giernesiei has revealed deep-seated purist or ‘traditionalist’ language attitudes that resist and deny language change. This nostalgic view of language and culture can hyper-valorise ‘authentic’ traditions (arguably reinvented3) and can lead to reluctance to share Giernesiei effectively with younger generations who might ‘change the language’, despite an overt desire to maintain it. This mismatch between ideologies and practices can be seen at language festivals, in lessons for children, and in the experiences of adult learners who were interviewed as part of a British Academy-funded project. I present a taxonomy of reactions to variation in Giernesiei, which confirms and extends the findings of Jaffe4 in Corsica. I also discuss recent revitalisation efforts that try to bring together older and ‘new’ speakers and promote the role of adult learners and ‘re-activate’ semi-speakers. The findings support the view that full evaluation of language vitality should include documenting the processes and ideologies of language revitalisation.5,6

The relations between different countries and continents have always been important politically and scientifically. This applies in particular to relations between Turkey and Europe. Through centuries, the Ottoman Empire was seen as the main enemy of ‘Christian Europe’. In this paper, three topics are discussed: (1) European, and in particular Austrian and German, attitudes towards Turkey's membership in the European Union. It is argued that the dominantly negative attitudes in this regard do not indicate a generally negative attitude towards Turkey. (2) Some of the reasons for the negative view of Turkish EU-membership in many EU countries are discussed. (3) In conclusion, three issues are taken up: the relevance of Turkish EU-membership; the reasons and persistence of national and ethnic stereotypes; the relevance of the time factor in international relations.

During the middle decades of the twentieth century, the Scientific Revolution came to be understood as a key period in Western history. Recently, historians have cast doubt upon this category, questioning whether the relevant institutions and practices of the seventeenth century are similar enough to modern science to warrant the label ‘scientific’. A central focus of their criticisms has been the identity of natural philosophy – the major discipline concerned with the study of nature in the early modern period – and its differences from modern science. This paper explores natural philosophy and its relation to philosophy more generally. It concludes that a significant philosophical revolution took place in the seventeenth century, and that this was important for the subsequent emergence of modern science.

From the late 1870s until his death in 1901, the Irish physicist G. F. Fitzgerald was one of the most active and influential proponents of Maxwell's theory of the electromagnetic field. Along with Oliver Lodge, Oliver Heaviside, Heinrich Hertz, and other ‘Maxwellians’, Fitzgerald took the lead in extending Maxwell's theory, clarifying its expression, and subjecting it to experimental test. The surviving correspondence of this Maxwellian circle provides a window into the workings of late Victorian physics and into the private side of scientific communication.

The main aim of this article is to analyse J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace (1999) from a posthumanist perspective. By focusing on the character David Lurie, this article analyses the complex materiality of bodies and the agentic powers of nonhuman entities in coping with individual trauma, where agency is no longer considered to be the distinguishing quality unique to humans. In so doing, it highlights the interdependence of the human and the nonhuman and the idea that environment is not a mere canvas onto which characters’ traumas are being reflected. On the contrary, it is a material-affective matrix which becomes a catalyst for making sense of the world in post-apartheid South Africa. At the same time, as this article argues, it decentres the sovereignty of the human subject.

This article outlines the lecture presented by Robert Zorec at the Academia Europea meeting in Liverpool on 19 September 2008, four decades after the Sherrington Lecture of Bernard Katz who, together with his colleagues, developed a number of paradigms addressing vesicles in chemical synapses. Vesicles are subcellular organelles that evolved in eukaryotic cells 1000 to 2000 million years ago. They store signalling molecules such as chemical messengers, which are essential for the function of neurons and endocrine cells in supporting the communication between tissues and organs in the human body. Upon a stimulus, the vesicle-stored signalling molecules (neurotransmitters or hormones) are released from cells. This event involves exocytosis, a fundamental biological process, consisting of the merger of the vesicle membrane with the plasma membrane. The two fusing membranes lead to the formation of an aqueous channel – the fusion pore – through which signalling molecules exit into the extracellular space or blood stream. The work of Bernard Katz and colleagues considered that vesicle cargo discharge initially requires the delivery of vesicles to the plasma membrane, where vesicles dock and get primed for fusion with the plasma membrane, and that stimulation initiates the formation of the transient fusion pore through which cargo molecules leave the vesicle lumen in an all-or-none-fashion. However, recent studies indicate that this may not be so simple. Here we highlight the novel findings which indicate that fusion pores are subject to regulations, which affect the release competence of a single vesicle. At least in pituitary lactotrophs, which are the subject of research in our laboratories, single vesicle release of peptide signalling molecules involves modulation of fusion pore diameter and fusion pore kinetics.

The interconversion of military and civilian scientific research has been discussed in various contexts. Fritz Haber was concerned with the military application of poison gas research in the First World War. It is less well known that, simultaneously, he also initiated modern pest control by toxic substances, thus taking advantage of the military development for civilian purposes. However, the case of Haber shows that, in the Age of Mass Extermination, such conversion cannot be easily kept under control.

In his huge ‘Pharmacognosy’ the universal scholar al-Bīrūnī (973–1048) equates, in 1116 paragraphs, about 4500 names of medicinal plants, and also foodstuffs, in 27 languages. Before the introduction of an internationally recognised botanical nomenclature this kind of literature served a practical need. Al-Bīrūnī’s work is now a mine of information for the linguist and also for world history. It testifies, for example, to the fact that the spoken Greek vernacular of the time had become already quite different from the classical language. Thus, the Byzantine emperors in their efforts to defend their state helped to conserve a cultivation of the humanities, which would have disappeared under Muslim rule. In the article on ‘capers’, al-Bīrūnī also offers a rare insight into a seemingly relaxed bit of small talk between Constantinus VII and an Arab ambassador.

The Nordic or Scandinavian countries represent variations on general European patterns of state and nation-building and political culture. Denmark and Sweden rank among the oldest and most typical of nation-states together with France, Britain and Spain and should be studied with the same questions in mind. Today, however, a sort of trans-state common Nordic identity coexists with independent national identifications among the Scandinavians. Nordic unity is regarded as a viable alternative to European culture and integration by large numbers of the populations. There has never existed a ‘Scandinavian model’ worthy of the name ‘model’. Because of a series of changes in great power politics in the 18th and 19th centuries, the major conflicts in Europe were relocated away from Northern Europe. This resulted in a virtual ‘neutralization’ of the Scandinavian countries north of the Baltic Sea. Today, the much promoted ‘Nordic identity’ reveals itself only through the nation-states. The ‘Association for Nordic Unity’ (Foreningerne Norden) was set up in 1919 only after all five Nordic countries had achieved independent nationhood: Norway in 1905, Finland in 1917, and Iceland in 1918 (the latter only as home rule to be followed by independence in 1944). The very different roads to independent nationhood among the Nordic countries and the idea of a common Nordic identity can be traced back to its beginnings in the 19th century

This paper examines the potential impact of East–West migration of talent on the innovative capital and hence the long-run growth prospects in Eastern sending countries. Complementing previous studies, we examine the impact of high-skill migration not only on the formation of human capital, but also consider migration’s impact on knowledge capital in the sending countries. In line with previous studies, we find that, in the short- to medium-term, high-skill migration strictly reduces national innovative capital and hence increases the gap between East and West. However, these effects might be mitigated by factors such as reinforced education of workers, productive investment of remittances, return migration and increased knowledge transfer. Given that the emigration of highly skilled labour affects human capital differently than it does knowledge capital, differentiated policies are required for human capital and knowledge capital in order to efficiently address the adverse impact of the most talented and highly skilled workers.

The nature of liberal arts education merits renewed attention and consideration, especially in the context of the modern university in both Hong Kong and mainland China, where there is growing recognition that quality education standards should be improved, and an interdisciplinary approach to education and research is the way forward. The liberal arts spirit is an illustration of the power of inspiration and transformation, and through engaging with different perspectives, students are enabled and encouraged to pursue independent study, which boosts their creativity and critical thinking. As a catalyst and facilitator, liberal arts education that encompasses fresh global perspectives and connections has proved its worth over the years. However, since it is sometimes easy to lose sight of some of the fundamental principles essential to university education, we need to realize that too little interaction between science and the humanities has widened the two-culture divide, and the question is how to reconcile, or better still combine, the two. The two-culture debate, although suffering neglect for a long time in China, is of profound relevance and implications for the modern university. It can be observed that participatory interaction inherent in the dynamism of pedagogical engagement is increasingly promoted as the preferred mode of teaching students, who have benefited from broad-based learning as the embodiment of liberal education. Overcoming rigid disciplinary exclusiveness is positively correlated with empowering students with broad knowledge and skills to succeed in the future.

The unification of European law – if it is ever achieved – belongs to the future, but much of this present article will be devoted to the past. This makes me look like the ancient Roman king Janus, upon whom the god Saturn bestowed the gift of seeing the future as well as the past, which led to his famous representation, in his Roman temple, as a man with two faces. As a professional historian I am, of course, concerned with past centuries, but the future of Europe and European law concerns me as a citizen of the Old World.

The literatures that have emerged from post-war Turkish migration to Europe have become a topic of discussion since the 1980s. However, studies comparing the emergence of these literatures in different European contexts are rare. This article compares Sweden and West Germany, two contexts where migration from Turkey has a similar history, but where the resulting literatures differ massively due to different political and literary conditions. Multicultural, and in particular multilingual, public policies in Sweden have facilitated the emergence of a Kurdish diaspora literature; this then became a major impetus for the emergence of a Kurdish literature in Turkey when it was finally possible to write and publish in Kurdish there in the 1990s. The emergence of the New Left in West Germany, reflected in a re-awakened workers’ literature and new left-wing publishing houses in the German literary field, has provided publishing opportunities for Turkish migrant writers influenced by a socialist internationalist tradition in the 1970s. These works laid the foundation for a literary tradition that has since come to be regarded as having changed the understanding of what it means to be German.