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Saturday, April 5, 2025

Geist

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Geist (German pronunciation: [ˈɡaɪst] ^ⓘ) is a German noun with a significant degree of importance in German philosophy. Geist can be roughly translated into three English meanings: ghost (as in the supernatural entity), spirit (as in the Holy Spirit), and mind or intellect. Some English translators resort to using "spirit/mind" or "spirit (mind)" to help convey the meaning of the term.

Geist is also a central concept in Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's 1807 The Phenomenology of Spirit (Phänomenologie des Geistes). Notable compounds, all associated with Hegel's view of world history of the late 18th century, include Weltgeist (German: [ˈvɛltˌɡaɪ̯st] ^ⓘ, "world-spirit"), Volksgeist ("national spirit") and Zeitgeist ("spirit of the age").

Etymology and translation

German Geist (masculine gender: der Geist) continues Old High German geist, attested as the translation of Latin spiritus. It is the direct cognate of English ghost, from a West Germanic gaistaz. Its derivation from a PIE root g̑heis- "to be agitated, frightened" suggests that the Germanic word originally referred to frightening (c.f. English ghastly) apparitions or ghosts, and may also have carried the connotation of "ecstatic agitation, furor" related to the cult of Germanic Mercury. As the translation of biblical Latin spiritus (Greek πνεῦμα) "spirit, breath" the Germanic word acquires a Christian meaning from an early time, notably in reference to the Holy Spirit (Old English sē hālga gāst "the Holy Ghost", OHG ther heilago geist, Modern German der Heilige Geist). Poltergeist (Noisy/Disruptive Geist) is a common interchangeable term. The English word is in competition with Latinate spirit from the Middle English period, but its broader meaning is preserved well into the early modern period.

The German noun much like English spirit could refer to spooks or ghostly apparitions of the dead, to the religious concept, as in the Holy Spirit, as well as to the "spirit of wine", i.e., ethanol. However, its special meaning of "mind, intellect" never shared by English ghost is acquired only in the 18th century, under the influence of French esprit. In this sense it became extremely productive in the German language of the 18th century in general as well as in 18th-century German philosophy. Geist could now refer to the quality of intellectual brilliance, to wit, innovation, erudition, etc. It is also in this time that the adjectival distinction of geistlich "spiritual, pertaining to religion" vs. geistig "intellectual, pertaining to the mind" begins to be made. Reference to spooks or ghosts is made by the adjective geisterhaft "ghostly, spectral".

Numerous compounds are formed in the 18th to 19th centuries, some of them loan translations of French expressions, such as Geistesgegenwart = présence d'esprit ("mental presence, acuity"), Geistesabwesenheit = absence d’esprit ("mental absence, distraction"), geisteskrank "mentally ill", geistreich "witty, intellectually brilliant", geistlos "unintelligent, unimaginative, vacuous" etc. It is from these developments that certain German compounds containing -geist have been loaned into English, such as Zeitgeist.

German Geist in this particular sense of "mind, wit, erudition; intangible essence, spirit" has no precise English-language equivalent, for which reason translators sometimes retain Geist as a German loanword.

There is a second word for ghost in German: das Gespenst (neutral gender). Der Geist is used slightly more often to refer to a ghost (in the sense of flying white creature) than das Gespenst. The corresponding adjectives are gespenstisch ("ghostly", "spooky") and gespensterhaft ("ghost-like"). A Gespenst is described in German as spukender Totengeist, a "spooking ghost of the dead". The adjectives geistig and geistlich on the other hand, can not be used to describe something spooky, as geistig means "mental", and geistlich means either "spiritual" or refers to employees of the church. Geisterhaft would also mean, like gespensterhaft, "ghost-like". While "spook" means der Spuk (male gender), the adjective of this word is only used in its English form, spooky. The more common German adjective would be gruselig, deriving from der Grusel (das ist gruselig, colloquially: das ist spooky, meaning "that is spooky").

Hegelianism

Geist is a central concept in Hegel's philosophy. According to most interpretations, the Weltgeist ("world spirit") is not an actual object or a transcendent, godlike thing, but a means of philosophizing about history. Weltgeist is effected in history through the mediation of various Volksgeister ("national spirits"), the great men of history, such as Napoleon, are the "concrete universal".

This has led some to claim that Hegel favored the great man theory, although his philosophy of history, in particular concerning the role of the "universal state" (Universalstaat, which means a universal "order" or "statute" rather than "state"), and of an "End of History" is much more complex.

For Hegel, the great hero is unwittingly utilized by Geist or absolute spirit, by a "ruse of reason" as he puts it, and is irrelevant to history once his historic mission is accomplished; he is thus subjected to the teleological principle of history, a principle which allows Hegel to reread the history of philosophy as culminating in his philosophy of history.

Weltgeist

Weltgeist ("world-spirit") is older than the 18th century, at first (16th century) in the sense of "secularism, impiety, irreligiosity" (spiritus mundi), in the 17th century also personalised in the sense of "man of the world", "mundane or secular person". Also from the 17th century, Weltgeist acquired a philosophical or spiritual sense of "world-spirit" or "world-soul" (anima mundi, spiritus universi) in the sense of Panentheism, a spiritual essence permeating all of nature, or the active principle animating the universe, including the physical sense, such as the attraction between magnet and iron or between Moon and tide.

This idea of Weltgeist in the sense of anima mundi became very influential in 18th-century German philosophy. In philosophical contexts, der Geist on its own could refer to this concept, as in Christian Thomasius, Versuch vom Wesen des Geistes (1709). Belief in a Weltgeist as animating principle immanent to the universe became dominant in German thought due to the influence of Goethe, in the later part of the 18th century.

Already in the poetical language of Johann Ulrich von König (d. 1745), the Weltgeist appears as the active, masculine principle opposite the feminine principle of Nature. Weltgeist in the sense of Goethe comes close to being a synonym of God and can be attributed agency and will. Herder, who tended to prefer the form Weltengeist (as it were "spirit of worlds"), pushes this to the point of composing prayers addressed to this world-spirit:

O Weltengeist, Bist du so gütig, wie du mächtig bist, Enthülle mir, den du mitfühlend zwar, Und doch so grausam schufst, erkläre mir Das Loos der Fühlenden, die durch mich leiden.

"O World-spirit, be as benevolent as you are powerful and reveal to me, whom you have created with compassion and yet cruelly, explain to me the lot of the sentient, who suffer through me"

"Hegel and Napoleon in Jena" (illustration from *Harper's Magazine*, 1895)

The term was notably embraced by Hegel and his followers in the early 19th century. For the 19th century, the term as used by Hegel (1807) became prevalent, less in the sense of an animating principle of nature or the universe but as the invisible force advancing world history:

"In the course of history one relevant factor is the preservation of a nation [...] while the other factor is that the continued existence of a national spirit [Volksgeist] is interrupted because it has exhausted and spent itself, so that world history, the world spirit [Weltgeist], proceeds."

Hegel's description of Napoleon as "the world-soul on horseback" (die Weltseele zu Pferde) became proverbial. The phrase is a shortened paraphrase of Hegel's words in a letter written on 13 October 1806, the day before the Battle of Jena, to his friend Friedrich Immanuel Niethammer:

I saw the Emperor – this world-soul – riding out of the city on reconnaissance. It is indeed a wonderful sensation to see such an individual, who, concentrated here at a single point, astride a horse, reaches out over the world and masters it.

The letter was not published in Hegel's time, but the expression was attributed to Hegel anecdotally, appearing in print from 1859. It is used without attribution by Meyer Kayserling in his Sephardim (1859:103), and is apparently not recognized as a reference to Hegel by the reviewer in Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen, who notes it disapprovingly, as one of Kayserling's "bad jokes" (schlechte Witze). The phrase became widely associated with Hegel later in the 19th century. Weiltgeist is distinct from Weltseele ("World Soul") .

Volksgeist

Further information: National character, National consciousness, and Ethnic essentialism

Volksgeist or Nationalgeist refers to a "spirit" of an individual people (Volk), its "national spirit" or "national character". The term Nationalgeist is used in the 1760s by Justus Möser and by Johann Gottfried Herder. The term Nation at this time is used in the sense of natio "nation, ethnic group, race", mostly replaced by the term Volk after 1800. In the early 19th century, the term Volksgeist was used by Friedrich Carl von Savigny in order to express the "popular" sense of justice. Savigniy explicitly referred to the concept of an esprit des nations used by Voltaire. and of the esprit général invoked by Montesquieu.

Hegel uses the term in his Lectures on the Philosophy of History. Based on the Hegelian use of the term, Wilhelm Wundt, Moritz Lazarus and Heymann Steinthal in the mid-19th-century established the field of Völkerpsychologie ("psychology of nations").

In Germany the concept of Volksgeist has developed and changed its meaning through eras and fields. The most important examples are: In the literary field, Schlegel and the Brothers Grimm; in the history of cultures, Herder; in the history of the State or political history, Hegel; in the field of law, Savigny; and in the field of psychology Wundt. This means that the concept is ambiguous. Furthermore it is not limited to Romanticism as it is commonly known.

The concept of was also influential in American cultural anthropology. According to the historian of anthropology George W. Stocking, Jr., "… one may trace the later American anthropological idea of culture back through Bastian's Volkergedanken and the folk psychologist's Volksgeister to Wilhelm von Humboldt's Nationalcharakter – and behind that, although not without a paradoxical and portentous residue of conceptual and ideological ambiguity, to the Herderian ideal of Volksgeist."

Zeitgeist

The compound Zeitgeist (/ˈzaɪtɡaɪst/;, "spirit of the age" or "spirit of the times") similarly to Weltgeist describes an invisible agent or force dominating the characteristics of a given epoch in world history. The term is now mostly associated with Hegel, contrasting with Hegel's use of Volksgeist "national spirit" and Weltgeist "world-spirit", but its coinage and popularization precedes Hegel, and is mostly due to Herder and Goethe.

The term as used contemporarily may more pragmatically refer to a fashion or fad which prescribes what is acceptable or tasteful, e.g. in the field of architecture.

Hegel in Phenomenology of the Spirit (1807) uses both Weltgeist and Volksgeist but prefers the phrase Geist der Zeiten "spirit of the times" over the compound Zeitgeist.

Hegel believed that culture and art reflected its time. Thus, he argued that it would be impossible to produce classical art in the modern world, as modernity is essentially a "free and ethical culture".

The term has also been used more widely in the sense of an intellectual or aesthetic fashion or fad. For example, Charles Darwin's 1859 proposition that evolution occurs by natural selection has been cited as a case of the zeitgeist of the epoch, an idea "whose time had come", seeing that his contemporary, Alfred Russel Wallace, was outlining similar models during the same period. Similarly, intellectual fashions such as the emergence of logical positivism in the 1920s, leading to a focus on behaviorism and blank-slatism over the following decades, and later, during the 1950s to 1960s, the shift from behaviorism to post-modernism and critical theory can be argued to be an expression of the intellectual or academic "zeitgeist". Zeitgeist in more recent usage has been used by Forsyth (2009) in reference to his "theory of leadership" and in other publications describing models of business or industry. Malcolm Gladwell argued in his book Outliers that entrepreneurs who succeeded in the early stages of a nascent industry often share similar characteristics.

Asian Century

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_Century

The Asian Century is the projected 21st-century dominance of Asian politics and culture, assuming certain demographic and economic trends persist. The concept of Asian Century parallels the characterisation of the 19th century as Britain's Imperial Century, and the 20th century as the American Century.

A 2011 study by the Asian Development Bank found that 3 billion Asians (so 56.6% of the estimated 5.3 billion total inhabitants of Asia by 2050) could enjoy living standards similar to those in Europe today, and the region could account for over half of global output by the middle of this century.

Some argue that Asia's growing emphasis on solidarity, as well as maturing and progressive relationships among countries in the region, will further underpin the creation of the 21st Asian Century. However, the worsening relations between China and India make hopes for a peaceful and cooperative Asian world order seem unlikely.

Origin

In 1924, Karl Haushofer used the term "Pacific age," envisaging the growth of Japan, China and India: "A giant space is expanding before our eyes with forces pouring into it which ... await the dawn of the Pacific age, the successor of the Atlantic age, the over-age Mediterranean and European era." The phrase Asian Century arose in the mid to late 1980s, and is attributed to a 1988 meeting with Paramount leader Deng Xiaoping of China and Prime minister Rajiv Gandhi of India in which Deng said that '[i]n recent years people have been saying that the next century will be the century of Asia and the Pacific, as if that were sure to be the case. I disagree with this view.' Prior to this, it made an appearance in a 1985 US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearing. It has been subsequently reaffirmed by Asian political leaders, and is now a popularly used term in the media.

Reasons

Asia's robust economic performance over the three decades preceding 2010, compared to that in the rest of the world, made perhaps the strongest case yet for the possibility of an Asian Century. Although this difference in economic performance had been recognised for some time, specific individual setbacks (e.g., the 1997 Asian financial crisis) tended to hide the broad sweep and general tendency. By the early 21st century, however, a strong case could be made that this stronger Asian performance was not just sustainable but held a force and magnitude that could significantly alter the distribution of power on the planet. Coming in its wake, global leadership in a range of significant areas—international diplomacy, military strength, technology, and soft power—might also, as a consequence, be assumed by one or more of Asia's nation states.

Among many scholars have provided factors that have contributed to the significant Asian development, Kishore Mahbubani provides seven pillars that rendered the Asian countries to excel and provided themselves with the possibility to become compatible with the Western counterparts. The seven pillars include: free-market economics, science and technology, meritocracy, pragmatism, culture of peace, rule of law and education.

Professor John West in his book 'Asian Century … on a Knife-edge' argues:

"Over the course of the twenty-first century, India could well emerge as Asia’s leading power. Already, India’s economy is growing faster than China’s, a trend which could continue, unless China gets serious about economic reform. Further, India’s population will overtake China’s in 2022 and could be some 50% higher by 2100, according to the UN".

In 2019 professor Chris Ogden, a Lecturer in Asian Security at the University of St Andrews, wrote that, "Although still behind relatively in terms of income per capita and infrastructure, as this wealth is translated into military, political, and institutional influence (via bodies such as the United Nations and the new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank), Asia’s two largest powers will gain a structural centrality and importance that will make them critical global lynchpins. Expectant populations and vocal leaders are accelerating and underpinning this criticality, and—if the existential issues of environmental pollution and corruption can be overcome—herald the emergence of an Asian-centric, and China / India-centric, world order that will form of the essential basis of international affairs for many decades to come."

Demographics

Population growth in Asia is expected to continue through at least the first half of the 21st century, though it has slowed significantly since the late 20th century. At four billion people in the beginning of the 21st century, the Asian population is predicted to grow to more than five billion by 2050. While its percent of the world population is not expected to greatly change, North American and European shares of the global population are expected to decline.

Economics

India's middle-class population of 300 million is growing at an annual rate of 5%. Shown here is an upmarket area in South Mumbai.

The major driver is continued productivity growth in Asia, particularly in China and India, as living standards rise. Even without completely converging with European or North American living standards, Asia might produce half of the global GDP by 2050. This is a large shift compared to the immediate post-cold war, when North America and Europe combined produced half of the global GDP. A 2011 study by the Asian Development Bank stated that: "By nearly doubling its share of global gross domestic product (GDP) to 52 percent by 2050, Asia would regain the dominant economic position it held some 300 years ago.

The notion of the Asian Century assumes that Asian economies can maintain their momentum for another 40 years, adapt to shifting global economic and technological environment, and continually recreate comparative advantages. In this scenario, according to 2011 modelling by the Asian Development Bank Asia's GDP would increase from $17 trillion in 2010 to $174 trillion in 2050, or half of global GDP. In the same study, the Asian Development Bank estimates that seven economies (China, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia) would lead Asia's powerhouse growth; under the Asian Century scenario, the region would have no poor countries, compared with eight in 2011.

Since China's economic reforms in the late 1970s (in farm privatisation) and early 1990s (in most cities), the Chinese economy has enjoyed three decades of economic growth rates between 8 and 10%. The Indian economy began a similar albeit slower ascent at the end of the 1980s and early 1990s, and has averaged around 4% during this period, though growing slightly over 8% in 2005, and hitting 9.2% in 2006 before slowing to 6% in 2009, then reaching 8.9% in 2010.

Both of these developments involved policy of a degree of managed liberalisation of the economy as well as a turning outwards of the economy towards globalisation (both exports and attracting inward investment). The magnitude of this liberalisation and globalisation is still subject to debate. They were part of conscious decisions by key political leaders, especially in India and the PRC. Also, the populations of the two countries offer a potential market of over two and a quarter billion. The development of the internal consumer market in these two countries has been a major basis for economic development. This has enabled much higher national growth rates for China and India in comparison to Japan, the EU and even the US. The international cost advantage on goods and services, based on cheaper labour costs, has enabled these two countries to exert a global competitive pressure.

The term Easternization has been used to refer to the spread of oriental (mainly Japanese) management techniques to the West.

The trend for greater Asian economic dominance has also been based on the extrapolations of recent historic economic trends. Goldman Sachs, in its BRIC economic forecast, highlighted the trend towards mainland China becoming the largest and India the second largest economies by the year 2050 in terms of GDP. The report also predicted the type of industry that each nation would dominate, leading some to deem mainland China 'the industrial workshop of the world' and India 'one of the great service societies'. As of 2009, the majority of the countries that are considered newly industrialized are in Asia.

By 2050, the East Asian and South Asian economies will have increased by over 20 times. With that comes a rise in Human Development Index, the index used to measure the standards of living. India's HDI will approach .8. East Asia's would approach .94 or fairly close to the living standards of the western nations such as the EU and the US. This would mean that it would be rather difficult to determine the difference in wealth of the two. Because of East Asian and Indian populations, their economy would be very large, and if current trends continue, India's long-term population could approach double that of China. East Asia could surpass all western nations' combined economies as early as 2030. South Asia could soon follow if the hundreds of millions in poverty continue to be lifted into middle class.

Construction projects

It is projected that the most groundbreaking construction projects will take place in Asia within the approaching years. As a symbol of economic power, supertall skyscrapers have been erected in Asia, and more projects are currently being conceived and begun in Asia than in any other region of the world. Completed projects include: the Petronas Towers of Kuala Lumpur, the Shanghai World Financial Center, International Finance Centre in Hong Kong, Taipei 101 in Taiwan, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, UAE, and the Shanghai Tower. Future buildings promise to be taller, such as the PNB 118 in Kuala Lumpur and Legacy Tower in Dhaka.

Culture

Culturally, the Asian century is symbolised by Indian genre films (Bollywood, Parallel Cinema), Hong Kong genre films (martial arts films, Hong Kong action cinema), Japanese popular culture, and the Korean Wave. The awareness of Asian cultures may be a part of a much more culturally aware world, as proposed in the Clash of Civilizations thesis. Equally, the affirmation of Asian cultures affects the identity politics of Asians in Asia and outside in the Asian diasporas.

The Gross National Cool of Japan is soaring; Japanese cultural products, including TV shows, are undoubtedly "in" among American audiences and have been for years. The worldwide spread of Japanese pop culture, particularly, Anime, Manga and Video games has led to Japan being dubbed a Cultural Superpower alongside countries such as the United States and Italy. About 2.3 million people studied the Japanese language worldwide in 2003: 900,000 South Koreans, 389,000 Chinese, 381,000 Australians, and 140,000 Americans study Japanese in lower and higher educational institutions.

Feng shui books topped the nonfiction best-seller lists and feng shui schools have multiplied. Major banks and multinational corporations employ feng shui consultants to advise them on the organisation of their offices. There has been a readiness to supplement Eastern forms of medicine, therapy, and massage and reject traditional Western medicine in favor of techniques, such as acupressure and acupuncture. Practices such as moxibustion and shiatsu enjoy enormous popularity in the West. So do virtually all the Eastern martial arts, such as kung fu, judo, karate, aikido, taekwondo, kendo, jujitsu, tai chi, qigong, ba gua, and xing yi, with their many associated schools and subforms.

Asian cuisine is quite popular in the West due to Asian immigration and subsequent interest from non-Asians into Asian ingredients and food. Even small towns in Britain, Canada, Scandinavia, or the United States generally have at least one Indian or Chinese restaurant. Restaurants serving pan-Asian and Asian-inspired cuisine have also opened across North America, Australia and other parts of the world. P.F. Chang's China Bistro and Pei Wei Asian Diner which serve Asian and Asian-inspired food is found across the United States and in regards for the former, in other parts of the world as well.Asian-inspired food products have also been launched including from noodle brand, Maggi. In Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and the UK an Asian-inspired range of noodles known as Maggi Fusian and a long running range in Germany and Austria known as, Maggi Magic Asia includes a range of noodles inspired by food dishes found in China, Japan, Korea, India, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand.

Yoga has gained popularity outside India and the rest of Asia and has entered mainstream culture in the Western world. International Day of Yoga is now celebrated across the world annually on June 21 since 2015, following its inception in the United Nations General Assembly in 2014.

Though the use of English continues to spread, Asian languages are becoming more popular to teach and study outside the continent. The study of Chinese has recently gained greater attention in the United States, owing to a growing belief in the economic advantages of knowing it. It is being encouraged through the PRC's support of Confucius Institutes, which have opened in numerous nations to teach the Chinese language and culture.

Chinese has been rated as the second most used language on the internet with nearly a quarter speaking Chinese, Japanese came as fourth, and Korean as the tenth as of 2010. According to the CIA, China hosted the most users, India the third, Japan the sixth, and Indonesia as the tenth as of 2020.

India has the largest film industry in the world, and Indian Film Industry produces more films than Nollywood and Hollywood.

In the early years of the twentieth century very few people were vegetarians. The figure given for the United Kingdom during World War 2 was 100,000 out of a population of some 50 million – around 0.2 per cent of the total. By the 1990s the figure was estimated as between 4.2 percent and 11 percent of the British population and rising rapidly. As Porritt and Winner observe, as recently as the 1960s and early '70s, "being a vegetarian was considered distinctively odd," but "it is now both respectable and common place."

The spread of the Korean wave, particularly K-pop and Korean dramas, outside Asia has led to the establishment of services to sustain this demand. Viki and DramaFever are examples of services providing Korean dramas to international viewers alongside other Asian content. SBS PopAsia and Asian Pop Radio are two radio-related music services propagating the proliferation of K-pop throughout Australia. Apart from K-pop, Asian Pop Radio is also devoted to other Asian pop music originating from Indonesia, Thailand, Japan, Malaysia and Singapore. Similarly, SBS PopAsia focuses on other East Asian pop music from China and Japan and to some extent Southeast Asian pop music in conjunction with K-pop. The rising popularity of Asian-related content has resulted in "SBS PopAsia" becoming a brand name for SBS content such as TV shows and news originating from Asia such as China, South Korea, Japan and India.

The growing awareness and popularity of Eastern culture and philosophies in the West has led to Eastern cultural objects being sold in these countries. The most well known being statues of the Buddha which range from statues sold for the garden to items sold for the house. Statues of Hindu gods such as Ganesha and East Asian iconography such as the Yin and yang are also sold in many stores in Western countries. Ishka a chain store in Australia sells many Asian-origin content particularly from India. The selling of Eastern cultural objects has however been met by criticism, with some saying many who buy these items do not understand the significance of them and that it is a form of Orientalism.

Religion

As recently as the 1950s, Crane Brinton, the distinguished historian of ideas, could dismiss "modern groups that appeal to Eastern wisdom" as being in effect "sectarian", "marginal", and "outside the main current of Western thought and feeling". Yet some Westerners have converted to Eastern religions or at least have shown an interest in them. An example is Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, whom the Beatles followed, first to Bangor in Wales in 1967, and subsequently to India to study Transcendental Meditation in 1968. The Dalai Lama, whose book The Art of Happiness became a best-seller, can attract huge crowds in New York's Central Park or London's Wembley Stadium.

Buddhism in some countries is the second biggest religion. FWBO is one of the biggest and fastest-growing Buddhist organisations in the West.

Belief in reincarnation has never been a part of official Christian or Jewish teaching, or at least, in Christianity, it has been a formal heresy since it was rejected by a narrow margin at the Second Council of Constantinople in AD 553. However nearly all polling in Western countries reveals significant levels of this belief. "Puzzled People" undertaken in the 1940s suggested that only 4 per cent of people in Britain believed in reincarnation. Geoffrey Gorer's survey, carried out a few years later, arrived at 5 percent (1955, p. 262). However, this figure had reached 18 percent by 1967 (Gallup, 1993), only to increase further to a sizeable 29 percent by 1979, a good six-fold increase on the earlier "Puzzled People" figure. Eileen Barker has reported that around one-fifth of Europeans now say that they believe in reincarnation.

Karma, which has its roots in ancient India and is a key concept in Hinduism, Buddhism and other Eastern religions, has entered the cultural conscience of many in the Western world. John Lennon's 1970 single, "Instant Karma!" is credited towards the popularisation of karma in the Western world and is now a widely known and popular concept today giving rise to catchphrases and memes and figuring in other forms of Western popular culture.

Mindfulness and Buddhist meditation, both very popular in Asia, have gained mainstream popularity in the West.

Politics

The global political position of China and to a lesser extent India has risen in international bodies and amongst the world powers, leading the United States and European Union to become more active in the process of engagement with these two countries. China is also a permanent member of the UN Security Council. Although India is not a permanent member, it is possible that it will become one or at the least gain a more influential position. Japan is also attempting to become a permanent member, though the attempts of both are opposed by other Asian countries (i.e. India's bid is opposed by Pakistan; Japan's bid is opposed by China, South Korea, North Korea).

An Asian regional bloc may be further developed in the 21st century around ASEAN and other bodies on the basis of free trade agreements. However, there is some political concern amongst the national leaderships of different Asian countries about PRC's hegemonic ambitions in the region. Another new organization, the East Asian Summit, could also possibly create an EU-like trade zone.

The Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov encouraged the idea of a triple alliance between Russia, the PRC and India first formulated by Indian strategist Madhav Das Nalapat in 1983, and supported the idea of a multipolar world.

Human Capital

The 2007 World Bank Report on globalization notes that "rising education levels were also important, boosting Asian growth on average by 0.75 to 2 percentage points." The rapid expansion of human capital through quality education throughout Asia has played a significant role in experiencing "higher life expectancy and economic growth, and even to the quality of institutions and whether societies will make the transition into modern democracies".

3G (Global Growth Generators)

The Asian countries with the most promising growth prospects are: Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Mongolia, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. Developing Asia is projected to be the fastest growing region until 2050, driven by population and income growth: 9 of 11 3G countries came from Asia. Vietnam has the highest Global Growth Generators Index, China is second with 0.81, followed by India's 0.71.

Based on a report from the HSBC Trade Confidence Index (TCI) and HSBC Trade Forecast, there are 4 countries with significant trade volume growth – Egypt, India, Vietnam and Indonesia – with growth is projected to reach at least 7.3 per cent per year until 2025

Next Eleven

The Next Eleven (known also by the numeronym N-11) are the eleven countries – Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Turkey, South Korea, and Vietnam – identified by Goldman Sachs investment bank and economist Jim O'Neill in a research paper as having a high potential of becoming, along with the BRICs/BRICS, the world's largest economies in the 21st century. The bank chose these states, all with promising outlooks for investment and future growth, on 12 December 2005. At the end of 2011, the four major countries (Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey) also known as MINT, made up 73 percent of all Next Eleven GDP. BRIC GDP was $13.5 trillion, while MIKT GDP at almost 30 percent of that: $3.9 trillion.

Challenges to realising the Asian Century

Asia's growth is not guaranteed. Its leaders will have to manage multiple risks and challenges, particularly:

Growing inequality within countries, in which wealth and opportunities are confined to the upper echelons. This could undermine social cohesion and stability.
Many Asian countries will not be able to make the necessary investments in infrastructure, education and government policies that would help them avoid the Middle Income Trap.
Intense competition for finite natural resources, such as land, water, fuel or food, as newly affluent Asians aspire to higher standards of living.
Global warming and climate change, which could threaten agricultural production, coastal populations, and numerous major urban areas.
Geopolitical rivalry between China and India.
Rampant corruption, which plagues many Asian governments.
The direct impact of an ageing population on continuous economic development (e.g. declining labour force, change of consumption patterns, strain on public finances).

Criticism

Despite forecasts that predict the rising economic and political strength of Asia, the idea of an Asian Century has faced criticism. This has included the possibility that the continuing high rate of growth could lead to revolution, economic slumps, and environmental problems, especially in mainland China.

Supercooling

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercooling

Supercooling, also known as undercooling,is the process of lowering the temperature of a liquid below its freezing point without it becoming a solid. Per the established international definition, supercooling means ‘cooling a substance below the normal freezing point without solidification’. While it can be achieved by different physical means, the postponed solidification is most often due to the absence of seed crystals or nuclei around which a crystal structure can form. The supercooling of water can be achieved without any special techniques other than chemical demineralization, down to −48.3 °C (−54.9 °F). Supercooled water can occur naturally, for example in the atmosphere, animals or plants.

This phenomenon was first identified in 1724 by Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, while developing Fahrenheit scale.

Explanation

A liquid crossing its standard freezing point will crystalize in the presence of a seed crystal or nucleus around which a crystal structure can form creating a solid. Lacking any such nuclei, the liquid phase can be maintained all the way down to the temperature at which crystal homogeneous nucleation occurs.

Homogeneous nucleation can occur above the glass transition temperature, but if homogeneous nucleation has not occurred above that temperature, an amorphous (non-crystalline) solid will form.

Water normally freezes at 273.15 K (0.0 °C; 32 °F), but it can be "supercooled" at standard pressure down to its crystal homogeneous nucleation at almost 224.8 K (−48.3 °C; −55.0 °F). The process of supercooling requires water to be pure and free of nucleation sites, which can be achieved by processes like reverse osmosis or chemical demineralization, but the cooling itself does not require any specialised technique. If water is cooled at a rate on the order of 10⁶ K/s, the crystal nucleation can be avoided and water becomes a glass—that is, an amorphous (non-crystalline) solid. Its glass transition temperature is much colder and harder to determine, but studies estimate it at about 136 K (−137 °C; −215 °F). Glassy water can be heated up to approximately 150 K (−123 °C; −190 °F) without nucleation occurring. In the range of temperatures between 150 and 231 K (−123 and −42.2 °C; −190 and −43.9 °F), experiments find only crystal ice.

Droplets of supercooled water often exist in stratus and cumulus clouds. An aircraft flying through such a cloud sees an abrupt crystallization of these droplets, which can result in the formation of ice on the aircraft's wings or blockage of its instruments and probes, unless the aircraft is equipped with an appropriate ice protection system. Freezing rain is also caused by supercooled droplets.

The process opposite to supercooling, the melting of a solid above the freezing point, is much more difficult, and a solid will almost always melt at the same temperature for a given pressure. For this reason, it is the melting point which is usually identified, using melting point apparatus; even when the subject of a paper is "freezing-point determination", the actual methodology is "the principle of observing the disappearance rather than the formation of ice". It is possible, at a given pressure, to superheat a liquid above its boiling point without it becoming gaseous.

Supercooling should not be confused with freezing-point depression. Supercooling is the cooling of a liquid below its freezing point without it becoming solid. Freezing point depression is when a solution can be cooled below the freezing point of the corresponding pure liquid due to the presence of the solute; an example of this is the freezing point depression that occurs when salt is added to pure water.

Constitutional supercooling

Constitutional supercooling, which occurs during solidification, is due to compositional solid changes, and results in cooling a liquid below the freezing point ahead of the solid–liquid interface. When solidifying a liquid, the interface is often unstable, and the velocity of the solid–liquid interface must be small in order to avoid constitutional supercooling.

Constitutional supercooling is observed when the liquidus temperature gradient at the interface (the position x=0) is larger than the imposed temperature gradient:

{\frac{\partial T_{L}}{\partial x} |}_{x = 0} > \frac{\partial T}{\partial x}

The liquidus slope from the binary phase diagram is given by $m = \partial T_{L} / \partial C_{L}$ , so the constitutional supercooling criterion for a binary alloy can be written in terms of the concentration gradient at the interface:

m {\frac{\partial C_{L}}{\partial x} |}_{x = 0} > \frac{\partial T}{\partial x}

The concentration gradient ahead of a planar interface is given by

{\frac{\partial C_{L}}{\partial x} |}_{x = 0} = - (C^{L S} - C^{S L}) \frac{v}{D}

where $v$ is the interface velocity, $D$ the diffusion coefficient, and $C^{L S}$ and $C^{S L}$ are the compositions of the liquid and solid at the interface, respectively (i.e., $C^{L S} = C_{L} (x = 0)$ ).

For the steady-state growth of a planar interface, the composition of the solid is equal to the nominal alloy composition, $C^{S L} = C_{0}$ , and the partition coefficient, $k = C^{S L} / C^{L S}$ , can be assumed constant. Therefore, the minimum thermal gradient necessary to create a stable solid front is given by

\frac{\partial T}{\partial x} = \frac{m C_{0} (1 - k) v}{k D}

For more information, see Chapter 3 of^[13]

In animals

In order to survive extreme low temperatures in certain environments, some animals use the phenomenon of supercooling that allow them to remain unfrozen and avoid cell damage and death. There are many techniques that aid in maintaining a liquid state, such as the production of antifreeze proteins, or AFPs, which bind to ice crystals to prevent water molecules from binding and spreading the growth of ice. The winter flounder is one such fish that utilizes these proteins to survive in its frigid environment. The liver secretes noncolligative proteins into the bloodstream.^[15] Other animals use colligative antifreezes, which increases the concentration of solutes in their bodily fluids, thus lowering their freezing point. Fish that rely on supercooling for survival must also live well below the water surface, because if they came into contact with ice nuclei they would freeze immediately. Animals that undergo supercooling to survive must also remove ice-nucleating agents from their bodies because they act as a starting point for freezing. Supercooling is also a common feature in some insect, reptile, and other ectotherm species. The potato cyst nematode larva (Globodera rostochiensis) could survive inside their cysts in a supercooled state to temperatures as low as −38 °C (−36 °F), even with the cyst encased in ice.

As an animal gets farther and farther below its melting point the chance of spontaneous freezing increases dramatically for its internal fluids, as this is a thermodynamically unstable state. The fluids eventually reach the supercooling point, which is the temperature at which the supercooled solution freezes spontaneously due to being so far below its normal freezing point. Animals unintentionally undergo supercooling and are only able to decrease the odds of freezing once supercooled. Even though supercooling is essential for survival, there are many risks associated with it.

In plants

Plants can also survive extreme cold conditions brought forth during the winter months. Many plant species located in northern climates can acclimate under these cold conditions by supercooling, thus these plants survive temperatures as low as −40 °C (−40 °F). Although this supercooling phenomenon is poorly understood, it has been recognized through infrared thermography. Ice nucleation occurs in certain plant organs and tissues, debatably beginning in the xylem tissue and spreading throughout the rest of the plant. Infrared thermography allows for droplets of water to be visualized as they crystalize in extracellular spaces.

Supercooling inhibits the formation of ice within the tissue by ice nucleation and allows the cells to maintain water in a liquid state and further allows the water within the cell to stay separate from extracellular ice. Cellular barriers such as lignin, suberin and the cuticle inhibit ice nucleators and force water into the supercooled tissue. The xylem and primary tissue of plants are very susceptible to cold temperatures because of the large proportion of water in the cell. Many boreal hardwood species in northern climates have the ability to prevent ice spreading into the shoots allowing the plant to tolerate the cold. Supercooling has been identified in the evergreen shrubs Rhododendron ferrugineum and Vaccinium vitis-idaea as well as Abies, Picea and Larix species. Freezing outside of the cell and within the cell wall does not affect the survival of the plant. However, the extracellular ice may lead to plant dehydration.

In seawater

The presence of salt in seawater affects the freezing point. For that reason, it is possible for seawater to remain in the liquid state at temperatures below melting point. This is "pseudo-supercooling" because the phenomenon is the result of freezing point lowering caused by the presence of salt, not supercooling. This condition is most commonly observed in the oceans around Antarctica where melting of the undersides of ice shelves at high-pressure results in liquid melt-water that can be below the freezing temperature. It is supposed that the water does not immediately refreeze due to a lack of nucleation sites. This provides a challenge to oceanographic instrumentation as ice crystals will readily form on the equipment, potentially affecting the data quality. Ultimately the presence of extremely cold seawater will affect the growth of sea ice.

Applications

One commercial application of supercooling is in refrigeration. Freezers can cool drinks to a supercooled level so that when they are opened, they form a slush. Another example is a product that can supercool the beverage in a conventional freezer. The Coca-Cola Company briefly marketed special vending machines containing Sprite in the UK, and Coke in Singapore, which stored the bottles in a supercooled state so that their content would turn to slush upon opening.

Supercooling was successfully applied to organ preservation at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School. Livers that were later transplanted into recipient animals were preserved by supercooling for up to 4 days, quadrupling the limits of what could be achieved by conventional liver preservation methods. The livers were supercooled to a temperature of −6 °C (21 °F) in a specialized solution that protected against freezing and injury from the cold temperature.

Another potential application is drug delivery. In 2015, researchers crystallized membranes at a specific time. Liquid-encapsulated drugs could be delivered to the site and, with a slight environmental change, the liquid rapidly changes into a crystalline form that releases the drug.

In 2016, a team at Iowa State University proposed a method for "soldering without heat" by using encapsulated droplets of supercooled liquid metal to repair heat sensitive electronic devices. In 2019, the same team demonstrated the use of undercooled metal to print solid metallic interconnects on surfaces ranging from polar (paper and Jello) to superhydrophobic (rose petals), with all the surfaces being lower modulus than the metal.

Eftekhari et al. proposed an empirical theory explaining that supercooling of ionic liquid crystals can build ordered channels for diffusion for energy storage applications. In this case, the electrolyte has a rigid structure comparable to a solid electrolyte, but the diffusion coefficient can be as large as in liquid electrolytes. Supercooling increases the medium viscosity but keeps the directional channels open for diffusion.