Thematic clusters

It is rather easy to discern certain thematic clusters among my suggestions (including the ones in appendix B).

First, I have repeatedly addressed matters of societal transitions, whether enacted as dramatic leaps or as gradual changes. This testifies to an interest in identifying processes that do not evolve cumulatively but appear as intermittently recurring constancies throughout history.

Second, the above observation implies a preoccupation with the dialectical nature of cultural evolution, partly enacted as setbacks and even collapses that for some time suspend a process directed towards progress in a certain sense of the word. For example, during certain periods of history the secular trend towards declining interpersonal violence, growing acceptance of ‘the other’ and technical progress are curbed and even turned into the opposite trend. These turning points need to be explained.

A third interest concerns the mechanisms behind minor norm changes as well as major norm changes. Fourth, many of the questions revolve around the evolution of human needs and desires, both unmediated and mediated.

Last but not least, issues related to the societal significance of knowledge, knowledge advancement and resistance to knowledge should be mentioned here, being a kind of meta question (however, only explicitly addressed in one of the topics discussed here).

Such clustering gives an indication of the particular research interests that have guided me in the choice of questions. This is how it should be. It reveals and invites a critical examination of my scientific idiosyncrasies. Perhaps it also inspires some researchers to suggest that certain questions should be added, while others should be either modified or even removed from the list altogether. I welcome such initiatives. I would even appreciate it if exercises such as mine were carried out in other parts of the world, enabling academics worldwide to get sight of their own as well as other researcher's culturally biased scientific preferences.

Hopefully, repeated encounters around these questions would contribute to triggering a thought process which I think would be beneficial to science and society. Needless to say, I do not intend to exhort all researchers all over the academic world to gather around a limited set of questions, such as the ones suggested here – no more than Hilbert wanted his fellow mathematicians to exclusively focus on his 23 or 10 favourite mysteries.