The noosphere vision of pierre teilhard de chardin and Vladimir I. Vernadsky in the perspective of information and of world‐wide communication 1

The noosphere vision of the two great natural scientists and thinkers Teilhard de Chardin and V. 1. Vernadsky is presented critically. Their basic ideas are discussed from the viewpoint of present‐day insights in natural science and of the world‐wide information and communication technology. To date very little has become known about their mutual influence on each other. It is advocated that the development of a noosphere can be supported by the networking and globalization of information and communication techniques. The noosphere is a sphere of human mind and of work, but it must not be identified with the modern technological trend that is changing all sectors of our life. A reference is made to Teilhard de Chardin's warnings against individualism, nationalism and racism, as well as fascism and Stalinism as seductive erroneous developments. The fundamentally teleological vision of T. de Chardin is contrasted in this paper with the idea of creativity in nature and in man. Delimiting conditions, such as structure, information, and at the level of society, the free will of man who has become aware of himself—humanistic values, are considered. All of them operate to limit the number of possibilities for development that are derived from the creativity of nature and man. Thus, new possibilities for development emerge at a higher level. The utilization of technology must be really oriented to human beings among human beings. Only with a strong internal determination of the social processes by understanding the genuine existence of man as man will it be possible to master the ambivalence of the technological effects and to come closer towards a society with deepened human information and communication.

Klaus Fuchs‐Kittowski, born in 1934, is Professor of Informationprocessing. He was head of the Division of Systems Design and Automated Information Processing at the Department of Theory and Organization of Science of Humboldt University Berlin. He was associated with the research at the International Institute for Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg, Austria. At present he works as Visiting Professor at the Department of Informatics of the University of Hamburg, and at the Beriin College of Technology and Economics he has a teaching assignment in Economy Informatics. He is also an associated member of the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, U.S.A.

Peter Krüger, born in 1934, Dr. rer nat, Dipl. Mineraloge worked at the Bergakademie Freiberg/Sachsen from 1958 to 1961 and from 1961 to 1985 in the Central Geological Institute Berlin. From 1985 to 1992 he worked as historian of science at the Division of History of Science at the Department of Theory and Organization of Science of Humboldt University Berlin. His special fields are history of geology, Russian‐German scientific connections in the 19th and 20th century and unpublished studies of Marx about geology, mineralogy and agrochemistry.     

Recent Consideration of World Government in the IR Literature: A Critical Appraisal

Because recent contributions on world government in the international relations (IR) literature have focused on relatively nebulous issues, they are of limited usefulness for illuminating whether or not an actual world government would advance the human prospect. This question cannot be sensibly addressed unless in the light of a specific institutional proposal. Along the authority-effectiveness continuum separating the relatively ineffectual existent United Nations on the one hand, and the traditional world federalist ideal of the omnipotent world state on the other, there are intermediate possibilities not subject to the respective disadvantages of the extreme endpoints of this continuum.     

In the Shadow of Terror

Summary

This study examined the effects of terror on world assumptions in Israeli youth. The sample comprised 2,999 adolescents aged 13-16 who were exposed to different levels of terror. Relations of objective and subjective exposure to terror, life events, ideological, religious commitment, and social support with world assumptions were assessed. Results show that personal and social resources made a more substantial contribution to the explained variance of world assumptions than exposure to terror. Implications of the associations between religious and ideological commitment and social support with world assumptions are discussed.     

Borders, Globalization and Eucharistic Hospitality

Abstract :  This article relates the sacrament of the Eucharist to world migration and hospitality. To weave these themes is to find borders all around the Eucharistic table/altar, borders often unnoticed but borders that define economic, social, cultural, sexual and class divides. Using the notion of  borderless borders  and engaging Jacques Derrida's notion of hospitality, the author tries to expand the possibilities of the Christian demand to welcome people in and around and through the eucharistic sacrament as people gather with one another to be with one another and issue this constant call of welcome to whomever wants to come and eat.     

Creatio Ex Nihilo: A FieldOriented Approach

Abstract :  Process‐oriented thinkers complain that the classical understanding of the God‐world relationship is inherently dualistic. Instead they propose a model of the God‐world relationship based on the soul‐body analogy. Yet this seems to compromise the freedom of God vis‐à‐vis creation and the notion of God as Trinity. The author suggests a new approach to the God‐world relationship based on a modified understanding of "societies" within the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead: namely, "societies" as structured fields of activity for their constituent actual occasions. The three divine persons of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity in this way first co‐constitute an unbounded field of activity or "space" for their own dynamic interrelation within the divine being. Then within this "space" by their conjoint free decision the persons of the Trinity gradually bring into existence the entire world of creation understood as a hierarchically ordered set of subfields corresponding to individual entities (inanimate and animate) and the "systems"(environments, communities) into which they are aggregated. Since fields can be thus interlayered and yet remain basically independent of one another in their ongoing existence and activity, God is not thereby identified with the world nor the world collapsed into God. But the divine persons and all their creatures still share in different ways one and the same communitarian life.     

THE VARIETY OF PANENTHEISMS

Abstract. In this article I review the efforts of eighteen scientists and theologians, recorded in this book, to describe the relation of God to the universe during a conference sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation at Windsor Castle in 2001. Theologians from several branches of Christian faith articulate their understanding of panentheism, revealing a considerable diversity. I deal with each author in relation to six issues: the way God acts, how God's intimate relation to the world is to be described, the relation of God to spacetime, whether God is dependent upon the world, what type of language is used, and the problem of dipolar panentheism. I identify significant differences between these authors, suggest where fruitful dialogue is possible, and distinguish between intelligibility and plausibility in comparing dipolar panentheism with other types.     

亚里士多德物理学中的“原因”和“运动”概念——从库恩的观点看

在库恩“范式”理论的发展中,“类比”对于塑形知识范式的基本作用被越来越多地强调。与此相应,亚里士多德亦将“类比”作为认识得以形成和扩展的基本方法。正是凭借对“人间”领域中较熟悉事物的观察,亚里士多德才得以形成对“天”进行论说的概念基础。正因如此,亚式物理学中那些诸多不同于现代物理学的特质,似都可以通过这种独特的类比模式得到说明。     

Distributive Justice for Others,Collective Angst,and Support for Exclusion of Immigrants

Harsh treatment of others can reflect an underlying motivation to view the world as fair and just and also a dispositional tendency to believe in justice. However, there is a critical need to refine and expand existing knowledge, not only to identify underlying psychological processes but also to better understand how justice may be implicated in support for exclusionary policies. Across two studies, we show that support for policies that restrict immigrants is exclusively associated with thoughts about fair outcomes for other people (distributive justice for others). In Study 1, Americans' dispositional tendency to believe in distributive justice for others was associated with greater support for a policy proposing to further restrict immigrant job seekers' capacity to gain employment in the United States. In Study 2, we experimentally primed thoughts about justice in a sample of U.S. police officers. Support for a policy that mandated stricter policing of illegal immigration was strongest among officers who first thought about fair outcomes for other people, relative to other unique justice primes. Across both studies, distributive justice for others was associated with greater collective angst—perceived threat towards the future existence of Americans. Moreover, collective angst mediated the link between distributive justice for others and support for restrictive policies. Overall, this research suggests that thoughts about distributive justice for others can especially diminish compassion towards immigrants and other underprivileged groups via support for exclusionary policies. In addition, merely thinking about distributive justice for others may be sufficient to amplify social callousness.     

The effects of justice motivation on memory for self- and other-relevant events

We examined whether people might distort and selectively remember the past in ways that enable them to sustain a belief in a just world (BJW; Lerner, M. J. (1980). The belief in a just world: A fundamental delusion. New York: Plenum Press). In Study 1, recall of a lottery prize reflected participants’ justice concerns, such that the average lottery amount recalled was lowest when a “bad” versus “good” person won. In Study 2, an unrelated experience of just world threat (versus affirmation) enhanced biased recall of the lottery prize when the winner was undeserving. In Study 3, participants who experienced a fortuitous bad break selectively remembered more bad deeds from their recent past, whereas participants who experienced a good break selectively remembered more good deeds. Study 4 demonstrates that such selective memory biases specifically serve to portray chance outcomes as more fair. Taken together, these findings offer support for the notion that reconstructing and selectively recalling the past can serve to sustain a BJW.     

What exactly are victim-sensitive persons sensitive to?

Research has repeatedly shown that people who are habitually sensitive towards unjust victimizations tend to behave uncooperatively and hostile under certain circumstances. But what exactly is the underlying motivation for such uncooperativeness? One explanation is that victim-sensitive individuals behave uncooperatively in order to retribute fateful disadvantages in the past; an alternative explanation is that victim-sensitive individuals behave uncooperatively in order to avoid being exploited in the future. Two experimental studies are presented in which participants were confronted with an unfavorable outcome that was either due to bad luck or to another person’s mean intentions. Findings from both studies suggest that victim-sensitive individuals are specifically sensitive towards mean intentions, but not to fateful disadvantages in general.