In the post-apocalyptic scenario of Douglas Adams’ 1979 novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, one person escapes the destruction of Earth and struggles to explain to aliens what humanity was like. Other sci-fi civilisations may be more advanced, but they fail to understand us. It may be that they are missing the informal dimension that escapes offi-cial…
Astronomer and Marxist Anton Pannekoek was a remarkable f igure. As an astronomer, he pioneered quantitative astrophysics and founded the renowned Astronomical Institute in Amsterdam that now carries his name. Before World War I, however, he was employed as a Marxist theorist by the Social Democratic Party of Germany, making him one of the leading intel-lectuals of international socialism. Beca…