Overview

It is difficult to doubt that we suffer at present from the manifold aspects of an economic crisis which affects all walks of life. Well, men in almost every epoch in history have maintained that they were going through a crisis which was sup- posed to be always more grave than any preceding critical phase. Very often those crises were not of an economic nature, but concerned either health, the political structure, the opportunity of acquiring knowledge, and so on. I think that we would consider today that some of those claims that were made in various historical epochs were often exaggerated if viewed from a historical point of view. However, it seems undeniable that we at present are in the middle of a universal economic crisis which has affected almost every facet of our daily life. And yet, the fact that despite these adverse conditions it is still possible to gather scholars from all corners of the world to deal with often sheer theo- retical and sometimes abstract pursuits is a refutation of any facile pessimism- it is reassuring to all who wonder where political and social events are taking us. Our salvation may well come from those acts of the mind so character- istic of the pure scientist and scholar.