Raivo Palmaru
The reality we create
What media presents to us is not a symbolic reflection of reality. The act of communicating is related to how an event is treated, not the real state of affairs in the world. It expresses the belief of the mediator – what he or she believes to be the truth. The conditions for observation are also determined by the media system itself, more precisely, the interests of its autopoiesis. Media's primary principle of action is self-preservation through constant reproduction of media messages. Reality as such, and correspondence between messages and reality, are of secondary importance. The differentiations made by the media system are its product – the picture of reality created by it – and need not have much in common with reality itself.

As such, media is one of the key systems of present-day society. It is a fundamental cognitive system through which society constructs its collective imagination of reality. The descriptions created by media give rise to collectively acceptable interpretations, more or less stable orientations, understandings and value judgements, to quasi- and pseudo-religions towards which people are oriented in their activities (including communication).


Rudolf Bultmann
Humanism and Christianity
In this essay first published in 1952, the author discusses humanism in the context of education in the humanities. Humanism is based on ancient Greco-Roman concepts of truth, goodness and beauty through which science, law and art turn the world into people's home and enable them to feel like members of the universe. Christianity, however, has primarily been formulated as the opposite. People do not reach God by striving for truth, beauty and goodness, but only if they liberate themselves from the world and are able to ascend to the eternity as their home.

On the one hand, history teaches us that there cannot be a synthesis between humanism and Christianity, and where it is seemingly created, it will immediately disintegrate again. On the other hand, however, it teaches us that the "question on Christianity and humanism" cannot be decided merely in favour of one or the other.

It is our historical fate that the humanist understanding of existence only exists in connection with the Christian understanding of existence and vice versa. The relation between both forces is living, fertilizing tension. There have been eras when the Christian faith with its clarity and purity has had to emphasize its antagonism to humanism, but there have also been eras when both Christianity and humanism have had reason to deliberate on what they have in common, and it seems to Bultmann that at the present, this is the case. What they have in common is, for example, the negative attitude to the arbitrariness of subjectivism and emphasis on education in the humanities, which makes us think that the spiritual world has an independent value for people as it shapes their character and personality.

It is, however, of crucial importance that humans should not be considered superior, and they themselves should not consider themselves superior. They should not see themselves as beings imprisoned by the goals of practical, bodily, economic and political life but should be personalities, i.e. beings who are something in themselves, who carry an idea and value in themselves, regardless if it is applicable to some practical aims.


Sander Tint, Helen Sooväli
Geographical depiction of a fire on the example of Petseri
Fires have been regular visitors to cities throughout history. Fires of varying extent regularly occur in built-up areas. The incidence of fires as an unmanageable and destructive element and their interaction with structures of human habitation has been considered accidental and difficult to generalize. Therefore, an explanation for the phenomenon has often been limited to factual description of the fire and its practical aspects, while no attention has been paid to the general meaning of the fire to urban society. Tragic spectacles are reproduced in social consciousness and play a central role in human society. Therefore, fires deserve more attention, including academic research.

As a concrete example is the great fire of 1939 in Petseri (Russ. Pechory – a small South-East Estonian town, from 1944 under the administration of Russia). An analysis is provided of the spatial distribution of risk in the town prior to the fire. In addition to the physical structure of the settlement, which was conducive to the spread of fire, the geography of the risk of fire depended on social circumstances. The critical situation caused a dramatic change in the physical environment, which influenced the spatial behaviour of the community and was in interaction with the social and political space. At the level of the individual, reaction to the crisis manifested itself in the rescue of personal property, but this activity was limited by the physical features of the environment and the regime imposed by the rescue board, police and fire service, which regulated the use of space.

The disaster bought forth the influence of different cultural backgrounds. The rational view that perceived the fire as a destructive process was opposed by the Orthodox understanding of fire as God's punishment in which people should not interfere. The interpretation of fire by different worldviews turned the event into a struggle for power between representatives of ideological regimes. Thus, the fire expressed the rivalry between the Russian Orthodox monastery and the Estonianized municipal government, which characterized Petseri throughout the independence period of the Republic of Estonia (1918-1940).


Edgar Krull
Normal schools – an anachronism or the future of teacher education
During the last decade, pre-service teacher education and its quality have become one of the most frequently discussed issues in Estonian education. However, the issues related to the content and organization of student teachers' school practice, as the most critical component of teacher education, have received little attention from our educators. The article is aimed at rectifying this deficiency by comparing and learning the strong and weak sides of organizing school practice of prospective subject teachers in normal schools affiliated to universities, and in cooperating partner schools. To this end, an historical survey of foundation of normal schools in the eighteenth century and their evolution into contemporary practice schools at teacher education faculties of universities is given, using the Finnish standard schools as an example. For a deeper understanding of the requirements of the content and organization of quality teacher education, the nature of this teacher education component is analysed in terms of its impact on the development of student teachers' practical knowledge. This knowledge, conceived as consisting of two proto-types – knowledge and beliefs and cognitive interactions – underlies teachers' decision-making in planning, delivery and reflective phases of instruction. School practice should provide student teachers with conditions for promoting their professional decision-making capabilities in all three phases, along with integration of theoretical ideas with practice.

The ideal solution would be a sandwich-like combination of alternately theoretical and practical studies, which is difficult to achieve in practice. The analysis of the main features characterizing the two systems of teacher education (as implemented at the Normal Lyceum of Helsinki University and cooperating partner schools at the University of Tartu) reveals that the Finnish tradition of university practice schools has many advantages in comparison with traditional university-centred and multi-institutionally coordinated teaching practice in partner schools.

For example, at university practice schools that are responsible for the content and organization of practice, the conditions are more favourable in many phases of practice. Supervision and guidance of students is easier and more professional due to specialization. Students' tasks and reporting procedures are clearer; practice schools are vitally interested in introducing educational innovations and providing quality practical studies, and, finally, the distribution of labour between school teachers and the faculty is clearer and more understandable than in the case of university-coordinated practice in several partner schools.

The article concludes that normal schools, as they function in the Finnish system of teacher education, are not relicts of a former teacher education tradition from the late the nineteenth century but represent the most advanced thinking in contemporary teacher education.


Kurmo Konsa
Perfection of humans – from homunculus to cyborg
Human societies reorganise both the environment and themselves. As a result, society is becoming more and more artificial. The driving forces behind this process are technologies that are developed to increase welfare. Characteristics of technological development are moving in from the outside world, closer to man, closer to the intimate core of the individual. Technology has moved from the reorganisation of the physical environment to man's biological body and genome.

Man lost the perfect body that God created a long time ago and is now an ever-changing project constantly under transformation caused by environmental problems (allergies, diseases), fashion or self-expression. Various medical procedures such as plastic surgery, piercing, decorations, etc. make the human body artificial. One of the greatest achievements of contemporary medicine is the use of both organic and artificial transplants. Kidney, liver and heart transplantation from one person to another, as well as artificial joints, bones, heart valves, etc. have become routine. The use of organs grown out of xenotransplants and stem cells is also explored. Sex change operations have made it possible for man to change gender.

Genetic technologies are expected to produce even more radical perspectives for the future. The new ways for controlling and "artificializing" our own biological processes include reproduction technologies such as artificial fertilisation, gamete donation, foetus transplantation, preservation of gametes and foetuses, etc. The new reproduction technologies, not to mention cloning, have dramatically changed society's views on reproduction, sexuality and social and biological parenthood. The issue of the artificial transgressing on the natural has a long history, in which alchemy has played a major role. Alchemists were arguing that it is possible to make a homunculus – an artificial man. There are no fundamental obstacles in the way of shaping the biological future of nature and the human species. Even the existing restrictions have often been imposed for ethical and religious concerns rather than technological limitations or risks. Biotechnological methods "complete" both nature and mankind for the benefit of progress and social welfare. The image of man as a natural being has irreversibly faded.


Aune Ainson
Different appearances of lacuna
What is the lacuna? At first sight, the meaning seems to be clear – lacuna is an empty territory, the lack of something or the state of absence. When we take a closer look, however, lacuna becomes indistinct and strange – it exists everywhere but does not have clear outlines; it is possible to grasb the lacuna, but the next moment it slips away; its effects appear clear and understandable but then turn out to be hazy and deceptive.

In order to study the lacuna, one needs to cut it open. In this essay, such cutting is performed on the various appearances of the lacuna – each of them as an individually constructed plateau. This cutting aims to observe how the lacuna deforms, constructs, replaces and fills; how its folded essence with its branching subdivisions unfolds, and what can be found inside or behind the lacuna.

Ainson also looks at the lacuna as a concept and tries to map its ontology by preparation. The result of the analysis shows that the lacuna is an active field: it is an initiator of transformations and transferences, terminator of linearities and changer of space.

It appears near the overcharge and multiplicity; tenuousness and cavity; classification and extension; absence and presence; void and fulfilment. It is constantly, silently present and has usually a determining, even a fatal importance in various systems. It is always followed by something else.

The lacuna is hazy and clever and, therefore, has been able to camouflage itself well. It cannot be seen often or, it is hypnotically misleading. And this is how it fills its goals – working silently and effectively.

Because of the complex ontology of the lacuna, the work did not provide a single and only truth, but a cluster of truths fixed to a certain moment and a specific point of view. Therefore, Ainson does not claim to fully describe or encompass the lacuna, but rather introduces this paradoxical phenomenon.

The essence of lacuna is perhaps well illustrated. When we enter a gap or an opening, we do not emerge from another one, but reach the "centre" of the rhizome only to find ourselves in the flashing lights of holograms, diving even deeper into the folds of the next one.


Mihhail Lotman
Semiotics of fear and typology of Russian culture. III. Glossophobia in Russian culture
The study consists of five parts: 1. Semiotics of culture and phenomenology of fear. 2. Space of fear in Russian culture. 3. Glossophobia in Russian culture. 4. Fear and its cognitive models (fear and threat in Estonian and Russian). 5. Borders of fear. Some fragments of the study, mostly concerning the first three parts, have been published earlier in Russian as well as in English; the whole of it is published in Akadeemia for the first time.

The first part defines the specific semiotic features of fear, relying on the traditions of both Charles Sanders Peirce and Ferdinand de Saussure. In the framework of Peirce's tradition it turns out to be easier to speak about concrete manifestations of fear, but the Saussurean angle makes it possible to speak about fear as a specific language that does not only apply the existing signs but also creates them.

Analyzing the models of fear in Russian culture, the author applies a systemic approach. He does not refer to individual texts or viewpoints that characterize their authors rather, but uses only those views that occur in the texts of different authors in different periods and different genres. Thus, they can be believed to represent culture-specific stereotypes.

One of the significant specific features of Russian culture is its emphatic cognition of space, which is closely related to threat and fear. A threat like this has a dual nature – large, limitless space is dangerous and frightening, but a decrease in space is also dangerous. Agoraphobia transforms into claustrophobia.

Another specific feature of Russian culture is glossophobia. At the level of the individual, glossophobia manifests itself in fear of speaking; at the cultural level, it can acquire a specific form, which is expressed as fear of (foreign) languages. This kind of glossophobia has been characteristic of Russian culture throughout the times, where language has always been a dangerous and alien element.

The understanding of threat in one or another culture is at least partly determined by the cognitive structure of the respective language. Therefore, it is illuminating to compare the Russian models of fear with those that have been expressed in Estonian, where fear is much more isolated from threat (sayings like "better be afraid than regret", in any wording, remain incomprehensible when translated into Russian).

Published 2009-03-17