In 1963 Karel Kosík, a Czech neomarixt philosopher, published his trailblazing book, Dialectics of the Concrete. Both Marxist and non-Marxist thinkers were impacted in Czechoslovakia and throughout the world. The Institute of Philosophy hosted an international conference to explore Kosik’s seminal work in breadth and depth. In his book, Kosík strove to re-think the basic concepts of the Marxist philosophical tradition and to employ them in analyzing social reality. The wide array of issues he explored are still relevant today. Included are mystification of the "pseudo-concrete"; the social role of art; the conception of reality as a concrete totality; the conception of the human being as an onto-formative being (i.e., one that forms human and extra-human reality in its totality); the systematic connection between labor and temporality; the relationship between praxis and labour and the explanatory power of the dialectical method. This conference took place July 4-6, 2014 at Villa Lanna. and Jan Mervart.
In this issue, we feature the work of Karel Sandera who was born January 25, 1903 in Mohelno in Moravia. He graduated with distinction from both the Czech Technical University and Charles University in 1924, earning the Doctor of Natural Sciences (RNDr.) degree from the latter and becoming the youngest RNDr. in the Czechoslovak Republic at the time. The scientific work of Professor Sandera was based on physical chemistry. He contributed to the transformation of empirical sugar manufacturing practices into a scien-tifically based technology, applying physical chemistry and sugar instrumental analysis. He was especially engaged in applications of conductivity. In his later years he also worked on sugar beet agronomy. He died July 8, 1959. and Jiří Jindra.
Odhalování příčin jevů v přírodě a ve společnosti je trvalou výzvou pro vědce všech oborů. Rozvoj moderních měřicích a výpočetních technologií jim umožňuje empiricky nalézat vztahy mezi veličinami (proměnnými) popisujícími stav určitého systému, který je předmětem zkoumání. Různé veličiny mohou spolu korelovat, ale jak určit, co je příčinou a co následkem, je složitější. and Milan Paluš.
Knowledge about relations between changes of air pressure, temperature or other meteorological variables in different locations on the Earth is a key to understand what impacts global change. A new mathematical and computational method uncovers causal relations, gateways and mediators that help to comprehend input and spreading of pertubations in complex spatiotemporal systems such as the climate and assessing the effect of geoengineering interventions of global impact of local weather extremes. The method can also be used for uncovering paths for information dissemination in financial markets or for tracing information transmission in the human brain. and Milan Paluš.