Editorial Introduction

What is research as such? How can we learn about the others—never being able to be precisely in their positions ourselves? How is scientifi c knowing different from—or similar to—other forms of knowing: poetic, bureaucratic, and journalistic? While until around 500 years BC what we now call “Ancient Greek philosophy” was written in the form of poems, then in our days much of the results of science become communicated in the form of short journalistic twitters or long bureaucratic grant applications and final reports. It would be slightly comical to imagine Aristotle trying to fit the quintessence of his philosophy to 140 characters to reach the widest possible cell phone users’ audience all over the world, or Heraclitus filling in the required fields in online grant application to allow him to study the movement of water in the river and describe the “benefits to the society” of such study. Scientists these days are expected to act in ways that take them far away from knowledge—yet close to administratively organized and remunerated lifestyles.