Refine
Has Fulltext
- yes (10) (remove)
Document Type
- Part of Periodical (10) (remove)
Language
- English (10) (remove)
Is part of the Bibliography
- yes (10)
Institute
Portal Wissen = Time
(2014)
“What then is time?”, Augustine of Hippo sighs melancholically in Book XI of “Confessions” and continues, “If no one asks me, I know; if I want to explain it to a questioner, I don’t know.” Even today, 1584 years after Augustine, time still appears mysterious. Treatises about the essence of time fill whole libraries – and this magazine.
However, questions of essence are alien to modern sciences. Time is – at least in physics – unproblematic: “Time is defined so that motion looks simple”, briefly and prosaically phrased, waves goodbye to Augustine’s riddle and to the Newtonian concept of absolute time, whose mathematical flow can only be approximately recorded with earthly instruments anyway.
In our everyday language and even in science we still speak of the flow of time but time has not been a natural condition for quite a while now. It is rather a conventional order parameter for change and movement. Processes are arranged by using a class of processes as a counting system in order to compare other processes and to organize them with the help of the temporary categories “before”, “during”, and “after”.
During Galileo’s time one’s own pulse was seen as the time standard for the flight of cannon balls. More sophisticated examination methods later made this seem too impractical. The distance-time diagrams of free-flying cannon balls turned out to be rather imprecise, difficult to replicate, and in no way “simple”. Nowadays, we use cesium atoms. A process is said to take one second when a caesium-133 atom completes 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between two hyperfine levels of the ground state. A meter is the length of the path travelled by light in a vacuum in exactly 1/299,792,458 of a second. Fortunately, these data are hard-coded in the Global Positioning System GPS so users do not have to reenter them each time they want to know where they are. In the future, however, they might have to download an app because the time standard has been replaced by sophisticated transitions to ytterbium.
The conventional character of the time concept should not tempt us to believe that everything is somehow relative and, as a result, arbitrary. The relation of one’s own pulse to an atomic clock is absolute and as real as the relation of an hourglass to the path of the sun. The exact sciences are relational sciences. They are not about the thing-initself as Newton and Kant dreamt, but rather about relations as Leibniz and, later, Mach pointed out.
It is not surprising that the physical time standard turned out to be rather impractical for other scientists. The psychology of time perception tells us – and you will all agree – that the perceived age is quite different from the physical age. The older we get the shorter the years seem. If we simply assume that perceived duration is inversely related to physical age and that a 20-year old also perceives a physical year as a psychological one, we come to the surprising discovery that at 90 years we are 90 years old. With an assumed life expectancy of 90 years, 67% (or 82%) of your felt lifetime is behind you at the age of 20 (or 40) physical years.
Before we start to wallow in melancholy in the face of the “relativity of time”, let me again quote Augustine. “But at any rate this much I dare affirm I know: that if nothing passed there would be no past time; if nothing were approaching, there would be no future time; if nothing were, there would be no present time.” Well, – or as Bob Dylan sings “The times they are a-changin”.
I wish you an exciting time reading this issue.
Prof. Martin Wilkens
Professor of Quantum Optics
Portal Wissen = small
(2016)
Let’s be honest: even science wants to make it big, at least when it comes to discovering new knowledge. Yet if one thing belongs in the annals of successful research, it is definitely small things. Scientists have long understood that their job is to explore things that they don’t see right away. Seneca once wrote, “If something is smaller than the great, this does not mean at all that it is insignificant.”
The smallest units of life, such as bacteria or viruses, can often have powerful effects. And again and again, (seemingly) large things must first be disassembled or reduced to small pieces in order to recognize their nature. One of the greatest secrets of our world – the atom, the smallest, if no longer indivisible, unit of chemical elements – revealed itself only by looking at its diminutive size. By no means is ‘small’ (German: klein) merely a counterpoint to large, at least in linguistic terms; the word comes from West Germanic klaini, which means ‘fine’ or ‘delicate,’ and is also related to the English word ‘clean.’ Fine and clean – certainly something worth striving for in scientific work. And a bit of attention to detail doesn’t hurt either.
This doesn’t mean that researchers can be smallminded; they should be ready to expect the unexpected and to adjust their work accordingly. And even if they cannot attain their goals in the short term, they need staying power to keep themselves from being talked down, from giving up.
Strictly speaking, research is like putting together a puzzle with tons of tiny pieces; you don’t want it to end. Every discovery worthy of a Nobel Prize, every major research project, has to start with a small idea, with a tiny spark, and then the planning of the minutest details can begin. What follows is work focused on minuscule details: hours of interviews searching for the secret of the cerebellum (Latin for ‘little brain’), days of field studies searching for Lilliputian forms of life, weeks of experimentation meant to render visible the microscopically tiny, months of archival research that brings odds and ends to light, or years of reading fine print. All while hunting for a big hit...
This is why we’ve assembled a few ‘little’ stories about research at the University of Potsdam, under the motto: small, but look out! Nutritional scientists are working on rescuing some of the earth’s smaller residents – mice – from the fate of ‘lab rats’ by developing alternatives to animal testing. Linguists are using innovative methods in several projects to investigate how small children learn languages. Astrophysicists in Potsdam are scanning the skies above Babelsberg for the billions of stars in the Magellan Cloud, which only seem tiny from down here. The Research Center Sanssouci, initiated by the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation and the University of Potsdam, is starting small but will bring about great things for Potsdam’s cultural landscape. Biologists are drilling down to the smallest building blocks of life, looking for genes in barley so that new strains with positive characteristics can be cultivated.
Like we said: little things. Have fun reading!
The Editorial
Portal Wissen = rich
(2017)
The current Issue of Portal Wissen is entitled “reich”, a German word with several meanings. Both an adjective and a noun, it can be translated as rich, wealthy, and abundant, or realm, empire, and kingdom. It is also part of words like Reichtum (wealth, fortune), Reichweite (reach, scope), lehrreich (informative, instructive) and ruhmreich (glorious, renowned*).
Realms – a complex subject. While the worldly empires of mankind come and go, even if they often claim the opposite, and the eternal existence of the kingdom of heaven has not been credibly proven, another and much older realm has an almost inexhaustible wealth – the animal and plant kingdom.
Speaking of wealth: Some people are rich and want to stay rich at any price. Others still want to become rich and are looking for a path to wealth – some for the fastest, some for the easiest, and some for the perfect path. There are even people who want to leave nothing to chance and use a scientific approach, for example the American author Wallace D. Wattles, who published the book The Science of Getting Rich in 1903. His essay was intended for “for the men and women whose most pressing need is for money; who wish to get rich first, and philosophize afterward.” He was so convinced of his work that he even offered a guarantee of success. Anyone who followed his manual would “undoubtedly become rich because the science that is used here is an exact science, and failure is impossible.”
Wattles has been almost forgotten, but the secret of wealth – at least financial wealth – seems anything but deciphered. Some have got it, others want it. There are worlds in between – as well as envy, prejudices and ignorance. More than enough reason for us to look again at Wallace D. Wattles and his self-confidently presented alleged relationship between wealth and science, and to say: Yes! Of course, science makes us rich, but primarily rich in perception, experience and – in knowledge. Science in itself is not glorious but instructive. The great thing is: All can equally benefit from the wealth created by science at the same time. Nobody has to get rich at the expense of others, on the contrary: You can often achieve much more together with others. Everything else comes (almost) by itself. “Those who acquire knowledge are richly rewarded by God,” is the religiously informed praise of sciences by the Islamic prophet Muhammad.
The current issue of the Portal Wissen, however, focuses on facts, which is admittedly not in style at the moment. We therefore invite you to a tour of the University of Potsdam and its partners. It is about studies on the rich biodiversity of porpoises and lab mice. We present a historian who studies rich church treasures and talk with an education researcher about the secret of financial wealth. German philologists explain the rich language of literary criticism in the era of Enlightenment, and we follow a geo-scientist into the mountains where he moved large boulders to find the right stones. It is also about the cities of tomorrow, which have many high-rise buildings but are still (rich in) green, abundant water from once-in-acentury flash floods, and insects as an alternative to a rich diet of tomorrow. We take you to the border area of two disciplines where law and philosophy work hand in hand, talk with two literary scholars who are studying the astounding reach of the Schlager phenomenon of traditional German-language pop music, and learn from a sustainability researcher how to work together to achieve long-term solutions for pressing global problems.
We wish you a pleasant read!
The Editors
Portal Wissen = Paths
(2015)
How traits are inherited from one generation to the next, how mutations change genetic information and consequently contribute to the development of new characteristics and emergence of new species – all these are exciting biological questions. Over millions of years, genetic differentiation has brought about an incredible diversity of species. Evolution has followed many different paths. It has led to an awesome natural biodiversity – to organisms that have adapted to very different environments and are sometimes oddly shaped or behave strangely. Humanmade biodiversity is stunning, too. Just think of the 10,000 rose varieties whose beauty delights, or the myriad wheat, barley, and corn variations; plants that had all once been plain grasses feed us today. We humans create our own biodiversity unknown to nature. And it is serving us well.
Thanks to genome research we are now able to read the complete genetic information of organisms within a few hours or days. It takes much longer, however, to functionally map the many genomic sequences. Researchers achieve this through various methods: Activating or deactivating genes systematically, modifying their code, and exchanging genetic information between organisms have become standard procedures worldwide. The path to knowledge is often intricate, though. Elaborate experimental approaches are often necessary to gain insight into biological processes.
Methods of genomic research enable us to investigate not only what is “out there” in nature, but also to ask, “How does a living organism, like a moss, react when sent to the International Space Station (ISS)? Can we gain knowledge about the adaptation strategies of living beings in harsh environmental conditions or even for colonizing the Moon or Mars?” Can we use synthetic biology to precisely alter microorganisms, planned on a drawing board so to speak, to create new options for treating diseases or for making innovative biology-based products? The answer to both questions is a resounding Yes! (Although moving to other planets is not on our present agenda.) Human land use determines biodiversity. On the other hand, organisms influence the formation of landscapes and, sooner or later, the composition of our atmosphere. This also leads to exciting scientific questions. Researchers have to strike new paths to reach new conclusions. Paths often cross other paths. A few years ago it was still unforeseeable that ecological research would substantially benefit from fast DNA sequencing methods. Genome researchers could hardly assume that the same techniques would lead to new possibilities for examining the highly complex cellular regulation and optimizing biotechnological processes.
You will find examples of the multi-faceted research in biology as well as other very interesting articles in the latest edition of Portal Wissen. I wish you an enjoyable read!
Prof. Dr. Bernd Müller-Röber
Professor of Molecular Biology
Portal Wissen = Layers
(2013)
The latest edition of our Potsdam Research Magazine “Portal Wissen” addresses the topic “Layers” in many different ways. Geoscientists often deal with layers: layers of soil, sediment, or rock are the evidence of repeated and long-lasting processes of erosion and sedimentation that took place in the early history of the earth. For instance, mountains are eroded by water, ice and wind. The sand that results from that erosion might eventually form a new layer on the ocean floor known as a sediment horizon. After tens of millions of years, tectonic plate movements can deform the ocean floor, pushing it upwards as mountains are created, bringing the layers of sand from former mountain chains together with fossilized sea dwellers into the realm of climbers and mountaineers – a fundamental cycle within the Earth system that was succinctly described by Ibn Sina nearly 1000 years ago, and later by Charles Darwin when he was crossing the Andes.
The landscape around us overlays the products of recent processes with those from the past. Slow processes or extreme events that happen very rarely – like floods, earthquakes or rockslides – wipe out certain characteristics, while others remain on the surface. In this sense, the landscape is like a palimpsest – a piece of parchment that monks in the Middle Ages scraped clean again and again to write something new. Analysing rock layers and soil is similar to the work of a detective. Geophysical deep sounding with sound and radar waves, precise measurements of motions related to earthquakes, and deep boreholes each provide a glimpse of the characteristics of what lies beneath us, giving us a better understanding of spatial distribution of the various layers. Fossils can tell us the age of a layer of sediment, while radiometric isotopes in minerals reveal how quickly a rock moved from deep within the Earth up to the surface, perhaps during the process of mountain building. Thin layers of ash tell us when there was a devastating volcanic eruption that influenced environmental conditions. The shape, gradation, and surface conditions of sand grains reflect whether wind or water was responsible for their transport. We know, for instance, that northern Germany was a desert landscape more than 260 million years ago. At that time, the wind made huge dunes migrate across the region. Over time, climate and vegetation slowly alter the physical and chemical characteristics of sand and rock at the surface, turning them into soil, the epidermis of our planet. Mineralogical analyses of layers of the soil layer tell us whether the climate was dry or wet. These kinds of observations allow us to reconstruct links between our climate system and processes that have taken place on the Earth’s surface, as well as those processes that originate at much deeper levels. The clues we use might be hidden under the surface of the earth or clearly visible on the surface, like in the mountains, or even in freshly cut rock alongside roads.
On the following pages, we invite you to accompany scientists from Potsdam into their world of research. They track hidden traces of longgone earthquakes in the Tien Shan Mountains; they discover ancient forms of life in deep-sea sediments. They even examine layers in outer space that can tell us something about the formation of planets. “Portal Wissen” not only presents scientists of the University of Potsdam who deal with the sequence of layers formed by solid rock, but also those scientists who deal with levels of education or social strata. Research scientists explain how to implement the social mission of inclusion in teaching, and how pupils from the Berlin district Kreuzberg examine language in urban neighbourhoods together with students from the University of Potsdam.
Although these types of “layers” are very different, they all have something in common. Their structure and profile are evidence of continuously changing conditions. The present will leave traces and layers that future geoscientists will measure and examine. We already speak of the Anthropocene, a geological era dominated by humans, which is characterized by far-reaching changes in erosion and sedimentation rates, and the displacement of natural habitats. I hope that you will discover exciting and inspiring stories in this edition. And remember – it is always worth having a look beneath the surface.
Prof. Manfred Strecker, PHD
Professor of Geology
Portal Wissen = Language
(2018)
Language is perhaps the most universal tool of human beings. It enables us to express ourselves, to communicate and understand, to help and get help, to create and share togetherness.
However, that does not completely capture the value of language. “Language belongs to the character of man,” said the English philosopher Sir Francis Bacon. If you believe the poet Johann Gottfried von Herder, a human is “only a human through language”. Ultimately, this means that we live in our world not with, but in, language. We not only describe our reality by means of language, but language is the device through which we open up the world in the first place. It is always there and shapes and influences us and the way we perceive, analyze, describe and ultimately determine everything around us.
Since it is so deeply connected with human nature, it is hardly surprising that our language has always been in the center of academic research – and not only in those fields that bear the name linguistics. Philosophy and media studies, neurology and psychology, computer science and semiotics – all of them are based on linguistic structures and their premises and possibilities.
Since July 2017, a scientific network at the University of Potsdam has been working on exactly this interface: the Collaborative Research Center “Limits of Variability in Language” (SFB 1287), funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). Linguists, computer scientists, psychologists, and neurologists examine where language is or is not flexible. They hope to find out more about individual languages and their connections.
In this issue of Portal Wissen, we asked SFB spokeswoman Isabell Wartenburger and deputy spokesman Malte Zimmermann to talk about language, its variability and limits, and how they investigate these aspects. We also look over the shoulders of two researchers who are working on sub-projects: Germanist Heike Wiese and her team examine whether the pandemonium of the many different languages spoken at a weekly market in Berlin is creating a new language with its own rules. Linguist Doreen Georgi embarks on a typological journey around the world comparing about 30 languages to find out if they have common limits.
We also want to introduce other research projects at the University of Potsdam and the people behind them. We talk to biologists about biodiversity and ecological dynamics, and the founders of the startup “visionYOU” explain how entrepreneurship can be combined with social responsibility. Other discussions center round the effective production of antibodies and the question of whether the continued use of smartphones will eventually make us speechless. But do not worry: we did not run out of words – the magazine is full of them!
Enjoy your reading!
The Editors
Portal Wissen = Earth
(2017)
Earth’s surface is constantly changing. It is the synergetic overlap between the geosphere, biosphere, and climatic sphere and influences the development of our planet. It is our habitat and plays a key role in maintaining the wellbeing of humanity. Many aspects of this system as a whole, however, are not yet understood.
This needs to change immediately because there is not much time left for the Earth – or for us. Photographer and filmmaker Yann Arthus- Bertrand warned in 2009, “In less than 200 years we have disturbed the balance of the Earth that has been created in over four billion years.” Potsdam and Berlin geoscientists, biologists, and climatologists have now joined forces*: They are investigating processes of the Earth's surface in order to better understand them on various spatial and time scales and to predict how our living environment will develop.
In this issue of the research magazine “Portal Wissen”, we present some of the research projects as well as the researchers who drive them. We followed researchers to Ethiopia – to the “cradle of humankind” – where elaborate drilling is offering a glimpse into climate history. Analyses of the several-hundred-thousand- year old deposits provide insights not only for geological and climate researchers. Biologists were able to reconstruct how entire ecosystems developed over long periods using state-of-the-art genetic analysis. A geomicrobiologist shows us the vast insight you get when you cross disciplinary boundaries. His research is no longer taking place on and in the earth but even in outer space. The young researchers of the research training group StRatGy cut large boulders from the Argentinean Andes into the thinnest of slices in order to understand how the mountains developed. And a data analysis expert explains why it is not enough to collect and feed a lot of data into a computer; they also have to be made readable using the right analytic tools.
“The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for,” wrote Ernest Hemingway. This is exactly what researchers are doing when they look for solutions to prevent humanity from irreversibly damaging the Earth. We met a researcher who is working with colleagues throughout Europe to learn more about trace elements and using plants as pollutant “vacuum cleaners”. And it was explained to us how satellite images taken from afar are revolutionizing nature conservation.
The diversity of research at the University of Potsdam should not be forgotten. We followed administrative scientists on the trail of successful reforms around the world and we looked at how reading can be more successful. We asked what supplementary extracurricular lessons can offer (or not offer) and looked into the networked classroom of the future. Germanists also revealed their Brandenburg linguistic treasures to us, psychologists showed us their experiments, and a historian explained to us why the MfS – the GDR state security ministry – were active as development workers. Last but not least, we visited a chemist in the lab, were introduced to the language of climate images, and listened to a romance philologist who researches with all her senses.
Enjoy your read!
The Editors
Portal Wissen = Data
(2019)
Data assimilation? Stop! Don’t be afraid, please, come closer! No tongue twister, no rocket science. Or is it? Let’s see. It is a matter of fact, however, that data assimilation has been around for a long time and (almost) everywhere. But only in the age of supercomputers has it assumed amazing proportions.
Everyone knows data. Assimilation, however, is a difficult term for something that happens around us all the time: adaptation. Nature in particular has demonstrated to us for millions of years how evolutionary adaptation works. From unicellular organisms to primates, from algae to sequoias, from dinosaurs ... Anyone who cannot adapt will quickly not fit in anymore.
We of course have also learned to adapt in new situations and act accordingly. When we want to cross the street, we have a plan of how to do this: go to the curb, look left and right, and only cross the street if there’s no car (coming). If we do all this and adapt our plan to the traffic we see, we will not just safely cross the street, but we will also have successfully practiced data assimilation.
Of course, that sounds different when researchers try to explain how data assimilation helps them. Meteorologists, for example, have been working with data assimilation for years. The German Weather Service writes, “In numerical weather prediction, data assimilation is the approximation of a model run to the actual development of the atmosphere as described by existing observations.” What it means is that a weather forecast is only accurate if the model which is used for its calculation is repeatedly updated, i.e. assimilated, with new measurement data.
In 2017 an entire Collaborative Research Center was established at the University of Potsdam, CRC 1294, to deal with the mathematical basics of data assimilation. For Portal Wissen, we asked the mathematicians and speakers of the CRC Prof. Sebastian Reich and Prof. Wilhelm Huisinga how exactly data assimilation works and in which areas of research they can be used profitably in the future. We have looked at two projects at the CRC itself: the analysis of eye movements and the research on space weather.
In addition, the current issue is full of research projects that revolve around data in very different ways. Atmospheric physicist Markus Rex throws a glance at the spectacular MOSAiC expedition. Starting in September 2019, the German research icebreaker “Polarstern” will drift through the Arctic Ocean for a year and collect numerous data on ice, ocean, biosphere, and atmosphere. In the project “TraceAge”, nutritionists will use the data from thousands of subjects who participated in a long-term study to find out more about the function of trace elements in our body. Computer scientists have developed a method to filter relevant information from the flood of data on the worldwide web so as to enable visually impaired to surf the Internet more easily. And a geophysicist is working on developing an early warning system for volcanic eruptions from seemingly inconspicuous seismic data.
Not least, this issue deals with the fascination of fire and ice, the possibilities that digitization offers for administration, and the question of how to inspire children for sports and exercise. We hope you enjoy reading – and if you send us some of your reading experience, we will assimilate it into our next issue. Promised!
Portal Wissen = Borders
(2013)
The new edition of the Potsdam Research Magazine “Portal Wissen” approaches the subject “Borders” from different perspectives.
As a linguist, this headline makes me think of linguistic borders and the effects that might result from the contact of two languages at a particular border. There is, for instance, ample evidence of code-switching, i.e. the use of material from at least two languages in a single utterance. The reasons for code-switching can be manifold. On the one hand, code-switching may result from a limited language competence, for example if a speaker lacks a particular word in a nonnative language. On the other hand, code-switching may be a matter of prestige if the speaker wants to demonstrate his or her affiliation to a certain social group by switching languages. If code-switching does not only occur sporadically but involves whole language communities over a longer period of time, it can result in significant changes of the involved languages. Which language “gives” and which one “takes” is determined by sociolinguistic factors. It is, hence, quite easy to predict that German varieties spoken in language islands in South and Eastern Europe as well as in North and Latin America will absorb more and more language material from their neighbouring languages until they disappear unless political will strives to preserve these language varieties. Increasing mobility of modern societies has multiplied the extent and the intensity of language contact and certainly comprises a large number of different contact situations besides the one most commonly known, i.e. the contact between German and English.
From a historic point of view, German witnesses a strong influence of various Romance languages such as Latin, French and Italian. In Potsdam, one cannot help being reminded of the French influence during the 18th century.
Overcoming language borders becomes also apparent in the everyday life of an international research university. In March this year, the Annual Conference of the German Linguistic Society took place in Potsdam, with more than 500 participants. Lingua franca of this conference was English. Compared to previous conferences, this further increased the number of international participants.
The articles in this edition illustrate various approaches to the topic “Borders”: On the trail of “Boundary Surveys”, we follow the Australian explorer Ludwig Leichhardt. “Travellers Across Borders” is focussed on articles dealing with the literature of the colonial Caribbean or with the work of an Italian geologist deep beneath the earth’s surface, for example. Looking for the “Boundless”, our authors follow scientists who discuss questions like “Why love hurts?”. The present issue of “Portal Wissen” also takes into account “Drawing Up Borders” in an article that is concerned with the limits of workrelated stress. Instances of successful “Border Crossing” are provided by the “Handkerchief Lab” as well as by new biotechnological applications.
I would like to wish you inspiring border experiences, hoping that you will get many impulses for crossing professional borders in your field of expertise.
Prof. Ulrike Demske
Professor of the History and the Varieties of the German Language
Vice President International Affairs, Alumni and Fundraising
Portal Wissen = Believe
(2014)
People want to know what is real. Children enjoy listening to a story but when my children were about four years old they started asking whether the story really happened or was just invented. Likewise, only on a higher level, our academic curiosity is fuelled by our interest in knowing what is real. When we analyze poetic texts or dreams we are trying to distinguish between the facts (e.g. neurological ones or linguistic structures) and merely assumed influences. Ideally we can present results that were logically understood by others and that we can repeat empirically. But in most cases this is not possible. We cannot read every book and cannot look through every microscope, not even within our own discipline. In the world we live in we depend on trusting the information of others, like how to get to the train station or what the weather is like in Ulaanbataar. This is why we are used to believing others, our friends or the news anchors. This is not a childish behavior but a necessity. Of course, it is risky because they could all be lying to us, like in a Truman Show situation. The only time we are able to know that we are in reality is when we transcend our selfconsciousness and when we accept two propositions: first, that we are not only objects but also subjects in the consciousness of others and second that our dialogic relations are again observed by a third party that is not part of this intersubjective world.
For religious people this is “belief” - belief as the assumption that all human relations only become real, serious and beyond any doubt if they know they are under the eyes of God. Only before Him something is in itself and not only “for me” or “among us”. That is why biblical language distinguishes between three forms of belief: the relationship with the world of things (“to believe that”), the relationship to the world of subjects (“to believe somebody”) and the assumption of a subjective supernatural reality (“to believe in” or “faith”). From an academic point of view belief is a holistic hypothesis. Belief is not the opposite of knowledge but it is the attempt to save reality from doubt by comprehending the fragile empirical world as an expression of a stable transcendent world.
When I talk to students they often ask not only about what I know but what I believe. As a professor for Religious Studies and a believing Catholic I am caught in the middle. On the one hand, it is my duty as a professor to doubt everything, i.e. to attribute each religious text to its historical context and sociological functions. On the other hand, I, as a Christian, consider certain religious documents, in my case the Bible, an interpretable but nevertheless irreversible, revealed text about the origin of reality. On weekdays the New Testament is a collection of ancient writings among many others, on Sundays it is the revelation. You can make a clear distinction between these two perspectives but it is difficult to decide whether doubt or belief is more real.
This issue of “Portal Wissen” explores this dual relationship of belief. What is the attitude of science towards belief – is it a religious one? Where does science bring things to light that we can hardly believe or that make us believe (again)? What happens if research clears up erroneous assumptions or myths? Is science able to investigate things that are convincing but inexplicable? How can it maintain its credibility and develop even so?
These questions appear again and again in the contributions of this “Portal Wissen”. They form a manifold, exciting and surprising picture of the research projects and academics at the University of Potsdam. Believe me, it will be an enjoyable read.
Prof. Johann Hafner
Professor of Religious Studies with Focus on Christianity Dean of the Faculty of Arts