Gerhard Schaefer Books

The sociological and psychological needs debates of the previous decades raised many questions about «need/desire/wish» on one side and «basic/elementary/peripheral/human» or «primary/secondary/tertiary» on the other. Many of these questions have not been satisfactorily answered so far, and one reason, among others, apparently is the lacking interdisciplinarity and internationality of the debates, in particular the frequent absence of biology, the «science of life», in the discourse. This book tries to fill the gap. Leading biologists and biology educators reflect their ideas on the requirements of homo sapiens, his general «life needs» and his specific «human needs», confronting them to philosophical, psychological and anthropological articles in the same book. An international comparative study of human desires in different countries, carried out by the Commission for Biological Education of IUBS (International Union of Biological Sciences), revealed an immense variance of desires according to economic state and cultural background of the populations under study. Beneath this variance, however, global features of basic human needs are visible which, in the light of the preceding theoretical considerations, give a strong impetus for a general «needs education» worldwide the aim of which can be increased autonomy of the citizen towards his/her own desires.

Kurzfassung der Denkschrift 2007 der GDNÄ-Bildungskommission, Gesellschaft Deutscher Naturforscher und Ärzte e. V. / Abridgement of the Memorandum „Allgemeinbildung durch Naturwissenschaften“ (2007) of the Educational Commission of Gesellschaft Deutscher Naturforscher und Ärzte (GDNÄ) (society of German Natural Researchers and Medicals)

Do cognitive/metacognitive abilities favour recognition of sense in life or not? Based on a sample of more than one thousand secondary schools students in Japan and Germany, the correlation between intelligence and perception of sense in life has been empirically examined. The study draws the conclusion that there is no clear correlation between cognition and sense. Finding sense in life seems to be independent from the level of thinking and to be independent as well from particular areas of commitment (e. g. science, technology, art and religion). The main factor discovered so far is a cultural/national one: The majority of Japanese students approve of the idea of sense in life whereas the majority of German students do not. The book discusses the different historical background of the two peer groups as a possible explanation and draws conclusions with respect to education.