Glauben als Grundlage - Die Rezeption Michael Polanyis im Gespräch von Theologie und Naturwissenschaften

Das Konzept des „Glaubens“ ist eine zentrale Grundlage von Polanyis Wissenschaftstheorie, und schon früh hat er sich explizit mit dem Verhältnis von Religion und Wissenschaft beschäftigt. Entsprechend wohlwollend ist seine Philosophie im Gespräch von Theologie und Naturwissenschaften aufgenommen worden. Seine deutschsprachige Rezeption blieb dabei bislang recht spärlich, während er in dem angelsächsischen Gespräch der Wissenschaften früh reiche Wirkung entfaltet und nahezu paradigmatische Bedeutung gewonnen hat. Die 2005 erschienene umfangreiche Polanyibiographie von William T. Scott und Martin X. Moleski, S.J. informiert auch über die Facetten von Polanyis eigenen Glauben. Sie stellt damit eine wesentliche Interpretationshilfe da, wie man eine Streitfrage der angelsächsischen Polanyi-Rezeption betreffs der Realität des Gegenstandes der Religion in seiner Philosophie beurteilen kann. Es ist davon auszugehen, dass er mit Tillich den Existenzbegriff in seiner Anwendung auf Gott abgelehnt hat und die Gelwick/Torrance-Prosch-Debatte, die um die Frage der unabhängigen Existenz Gottes in Polanyis Denken kreist, deswegen mehr oder weniger sinnlos ist.

Classifying and mapping the urban transition in Vietnam

The urban transition almost always involves wrenching social adjustment as small agricultural communities are forced to adjust rapidly to industrial ways of life. Large-scale in-migration of young people, usually from poor regions, creates enormous demand and expectations for community and social services. One immediate problem planners face in approaching this challenge is how to define, differentiate, and map what is rural, urban, and transitional (i.e., peri-urban). This project established an urban classification for Vietnam by using national census and remote sensing data to identify and map the smallest administrative units for which data are collected as rural, peri-urban, urban, or urban core. We used both natural and human factors in the quantitative model: income from agriculture, land under agriculture and forests, houses with modern sanitation, and the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index. Model results suggest that in 2006, 71% of Vietnam's 10,891 communes were rural, 18% peri-urban, 3% urban, and 4% urban core. Of the communes our model classified as peri-urban, 61% were classified by the Vietnamese government as rural. More than 7% of Vietnam's land area can be classified as peri-urban and approximately 13% of its population (more than 11 million people) lives in peri-urban areas. We identified and mapped three types of peri-urban places: communes in the periphery of large towns and cities; communes along highways; and communes associated with provincial administration or home to industrial, energy, or natural resources projects (e.g., mining). We validated this classification based on ground observations, analyses of multi-temporal night-time lights data, and an examination of road networks. The model provides a method for rapidly assessing the rural–urban nature of places to assist planners in identifying rural areas undergoing rapid change with accompanying needs for investments in building, sanitation, road infrastructure, and government institutions.

Role of Urbanization, Land-Use Diversity, and Livestock Intensification in Zoonotic Emerging Infectious Diseases

Emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) continue to significantly threaten human and animal health. While there has been some progress in identifying underlying proximal driving forces and causal mechanisms of disease emergence, the role of distal factors is most poorly understood. This article focuses on analyzing the statistical association between highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1 and urbanization, land-use diversity and poultry intensification. A special form of the urban transition—peri-urbanization—was hypothesized as being associated with ‘hot-spots’ of disease emergence. Novel metrics were used to characterize these distal risk factors. Our models, which combined these newly proposed risk factors with previously known natural and human risk factors, had a far higher predictive performance compared to published models for the first two epidemiological waves in Viet Nam. We found that when relevant risk factors are taken into account, urbanization is generally not a significant independent risk factor. However, urbanization spatially combines other risk factors leading to peri-urban places being the most likely ‘hot-spots’. The work highlights that peri-urban areas have highest levels of chicken density, duck and geese flock size diversity, fraction of land under rice, fraction of land under aquaculture compared to rural and urban areas. Land-use diversity, which has previously never been studied in the context of HPAI H5N1, was found to be a significant risk factor. Places where intensive and extensive forms of poultry production are collocated were found to be at greater risk.

Der rettende Begleiter. Der Erzengel Michael ist mehr als nur der Engel, der mit dem Teufel kämpft

Ein Artikel über die Figur des Erzengels Michael und das theologische Engelsverständnis in einer kirchlichen Zeitschrift für ein allgemeines Publikum.

Wissenschaft und Glauben bei Michael Polanyi

For Michael Polanyi, religion and science fight abreast to protect the occidental culture from totalitarian threat. Both are belief-based endeavors, Polanyi is convinced. While this is not surprising at all regarding religion, it is surely a provocation regarding science. The article tries to explore this original thought of Polanyi and to examine how it is rooted in his personal convictions and beliefs. Special emphasis is given to Polanyi’s critique of contemporary biology, as expressed in his article on “Science and Religion”, in some ways a response to Paul Tillich’s theology. Contemporary biology’s findings undermine exactly what Polanyi is fighting for, hence he is convinced that its findings are somewhat flawed. This should however not lead to the false conclusion that Polanyi had anything to do with creationism or would have favored Intelligent Design in our days.