Valuable forms of activities favourable for EUROSCIENCE

The scope of activities undertaken by Euroscience is reflected in its full name: “European Association for the Promotion of Science and Technology”. There are many different ways of such “promotion”. Traditionally many efforts are made to organize different kinds of discussions and debates as well as a dialogue between scientists and society with a hope of mutual understanding. It is assumed that participants of such discussions are creative enough to put forward valuable ideas and conceptions which might well become a part of the European policy in science and technology.

As has often been made clear, Euroscience certainly does not wish any monopoly in pursuit of its aims. There are many other organisations and associations also much interested in promotion of science and technology. Each of them has some specificity of focus – by discipline or geography and so forth, reflecting very wide diversification of science and its problems. In this aspect the Euroscience is the most general association, embracing all scientific disciplines, including multi-disciplinary studies, and all geographical regions within Europe and even reaching out into its neighbourhood. It is equally welcoming to experienced researchers and touniversity students – and indeed to all European citizens who interested to know more about achievements in science and its further perspectives and applications.

But such a wide scope of interest creates its own problems. In Russian literature there is a fictional character, Koz’ma Prutkov, who repeated many times that “it is impossible to embrace unembraceable”. One way to cope with problems of this kind is internal diversification of Euroscience, with its working groups and local sections, and a high degree of diversification in the ESOF programmes.

Another way might be pursued by interactions with other organisations and associations, which share with Euroscience a deep interest in promotion of science and technology in Europe. Some of these organisations and associations have already agreed to become a corporate member of Euroscience, though the interaction of Euroscience with its corporate members could be improved. But there are many other scientific organisations and associations which are reluctant to become corporate members of Euroscience and prefer to leave the decision on membership to individuals in their organisations.

There is a good reason, therefore, for Euroscience to be in close connection with many organisations, associations, unions and so on which might be considered as allies and valuable partners. In fact, there are already a number of good examples of such interaction. Up to now in Russia the most positive support for Euroscience’s activities is from the SPASS – St Petersburg Association of Scientists and Scholars. This is the official name, but its members still use a more short name “the Union of Scientists”. In 2002 Prof. Jean-Patrick Connerade, then the President of Euroscience (and a member of SPASS), suggested to the General Assembly that it should endow the SPASS, at least temporarily, with a status of Russian local section of Euroscience. Later another Euroscience local section was organised in St Petersburg, partially overlapping with the SPASS by members and activities, but formally independent, but this has not prevented the SPASS from continuing its activities closely related to aims and tasks of Euroscience.

The SPASS is now approaching its twentieth anniversary. It has had its own hard times, but over time its successful activities have been expanded in quantity and improved in quality. As a member of SPASS, I was present on the 18th annual conference of SPASS this April and was extremely pleased to see a very efficient team of its leaders in charge. Currently there are 902 members of SPASS. More than 60 members are foreign scientists or representative of the Russian scientific diaspora, and their membership of SPASS is a good reason for Euroscience to maintain mutually useful contacts.

The activities of SPASS in many ways appear as a Russian mirror of the activities of Euroscience. For example, a close interaction of Euroscience with authorities of European Union is mirrored by the interaction of SPASS with Russian federal and local authorities, the purposes of such interaction being the same as those associated with creation of the ERA. Success has sometimes been rather limited, but the process is still quite valuable.

The SPASS pays much of attention to scientific work of its members and other city scientists and provides many of them with organisational support. For example, such support has been given to scientific projects in biotechnology, cosmic biology, synergetic studies, system modeling as well as in social sciences and humanities. Much help was provided to keep the famous city heritage and to expand museum activities. There are many other examples of SPASS activities, too. The SPASS has 17 thematic sections (centres), concerned with the problems of ecology, philosophy, evolution, marine and navy activities, oil and gas production, etc. All these activities are not only for members of SPASS but for all interested people.

A good illustration of SPASS activities might be given by two particular examples. I think many readers know about “the monkey process” which took place in 1926 in a small town in Tennessee (USA). One teacher was sued by several citizens of the town for teaching his pupils about Darwin’s theory of evolution (in some contradiction to the creativism of the Bible). In St. Petersburg a surprisingly similar process was recently organised. The SPASS has a special section on study of historic and philosophic meaning of religion. Nevertheless, it organised a mass movement in defense of the secular character of education in state secondary schools. So Darwin has kept his place in scholar sourcebooks.

The second example concerns the activities of the European University at St. Petersburg, an independent graduate university formed in 1994 and widely recognised as one of the leading academic institutions in the humanities and social sciences in modern Russia. The SPASS has the honour of being one of three founders of this worthy University. In February 2008, however, the University was forced to suspend teaching for an uncertain time on the pretext of its violation of preventive fire-fighting regulations. Usually in such cases demands of fire inspection are satisfied without closing of the whole building, so many people believed that the University was closed for political reasons. The SPASS, as a founder of the University, intervened and helped to solve the problem (political or not) and so the work of the University was recommenced.

The aim of this article is to show that real support for Euroscience aims and activities should be recognised in the way many local and regional organisations like the SPASS promote science and technology in local situations.