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To fulfill its mission a human-centered paradigm as envisioned by the World Academy of Art & Science should combine optimism with pessimism. An essential meta-value is avoiding the bad, in addition to achieving "the good". Realistic assessment of human beings is a must. An appropriately phased time horizon of 10 to 80 years should frame the paradigm. Evaluation of emerging science and technology with very dangerous potentials, such as those posed by synthesizing viruses and radical "human enhancement," followed perhaps by human cloning and deep genetic engineering, is essential. Thinking ahead realistically on alternative futures of the human species as a whole and their drivers is a must, giving due weight to dangerous propensities as well as virtues of human beings. Only a small minority of humanity and its political leaders have the understanding essential for coping with fateful choices increasingly facing humanity. Inter alia essential is the regulation of dangerous research and technologies enforced by a strict global regime headed by a duly constituted circumscribed global authority. An upgraded genre of political leaders within redesigned democracy is essential. No human-centered paradigm should ignore such requirements. All this lead to my suggestion to focus the paradigm on the most important and urgent, what Dag Hammarskjöld appropriately called "Preventing Hell on Earth". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present politics of political science being as they are, the idea of promoting the application of political science to important policy problems seems to need little justification. Application of science requires more than advocacy of predetermined positions with the help of scientific terminology. Even a majority vote by political scientists in respect to a concrete policy issue perhaps important as an exercise of the democratic rights and duties of political scientists in their capacity as enlightened citizen cannot be regarded as "application of political science to important policy problems." When speaking about the application of political science to policy problems, it is essential to consider the time dimension. Adopting a short time perspective, the main mission is to help in identification of preferable solutions to presently pressing policy problems.