Near-death experiences offer a glimpse not only into the nature of death but also into the meaning of life. They are not only useful tools to aid in the human quest to understand death but are also deeply meaningful, transformative experiences for the people who have them. In a unique contribution to the growing and popular literature on the subject, philosophers John Martin Fischer and Benj…
This book is the outcome of a joint experiment—an experimental exercise in university–industry relationship building between our institutions: BMW and Friedrich-Alexander-Universität (FAU). To be sure, our institutions have always had good and trusting relationships between individual experts—long before our time in leadership roles. People at BMW and FAU have been in…
A decade ago, it was still somewhat conventional to start a study by writ-ing how “esports is a novel phenomenon.” As we write this introduction in 2021, that is no longer true. Today, more than a thousand studies have been published on esports, including several books and special issues. Moreover, the work is no longer conducted purely in the “game studies” related fields, bu…
I would like to preface this study with an example taken from what couldperhaps be termed the “Great Global Vortex” of the twenty-first century: theinternet. On YouTube, we can find two short clips, each starring an imposingand controversial figure in the history of British art and literature. The firstis a less than minute long newsreel clip from 1938 in which British modernistpainter, wri…
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…
In 1925 a rare type of building made its appearance in the literary world: a house entirely constructed of glass, prefabricated yet individualized, light but stable, flat-roofed but with walls which changed colour according to the surrounding land-scape. The cavity walls allowed for the movement of water – warm in winter-time and cold in summer-time – which generated a co…
In 2007,the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Bundesministe-rium für Bildung undForschung)instituted theKäte HamburgerInternational Cen-tres (KHK) with the purpose of advancinginnovative,interdisciplinary,and inter-nationallyvisible research in the social sciencesand the humanities. In the secondround of calls of proposals for KHK theMinistry widened the reach by funding twoc…
A classic monograph that serves as a diagnostic guide to neurologic levels for residents in both orthopedics and neurology.
A combination of all three aspects is also feasible. For example, the cult of a protective saint against the plague spreads in a European region hardly affected by the Black Death, even as the pandemic itself was sparked in part by changing precipitation pat-terns in Central Asia.Perhaps it is more useful to think of the multi-level impacts of a meteorological extreme event on a s…
No one has given the polymath Thomas Young (1773–1829) the all-round examination he so richly deserves—until now. Celebrated biographer Andrew Robinson portrays a man who solved mystery after mystery in the face of ridicule and rejection, and never sought fame. As a physicist, Young challenged the theories of Isaac Newton and proved that light is a wave. As a physician, he showed how the ey…