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Einstein Meets Magritte: An Interdisciplinary Reflection presents insights of the renowned key speakers of the interdisciplinary Einstein meets Magritte conference (1995, Brussels Free University). The contributions elaborate on fundamental questions of science, with regard to the contemporary world, and push beyond the borders of traditional approaches. All of the articles in this volume address this fundamental theme, but somewhere along the road the volume expanded to become much more than a mere expression of the conference's dynamics. The articles not only deal with several scientific disciplines, they also confront these fields with the full spectrum of contemporary life, and become new science. As such, this volume presents a state-of-the-art reflection of science in the world today, in all its diversity. The contributions are accessible to a large audience of scientists, students, educators, and everyone who wants to keep up with science today.
The book presents an interdisciplinary collection of analyses that discuss the impact of market economy on our culture in the post-Berlin Wall era. It contains two parts. The first focuses on the commercialisation of science and education. The second elaborates on the multiple and diverse relation between art and capital.
In this book the editors brought together outstanding articles concerning intercultural aesthetics. The concept ‘Intercultural aesthetics’ creates a home space for an artistic cross-fertilization between cultures, and for heterogeneity, but it is also firmly linked with the intercultural turn within Western and non-Western philosophy. The book is divided into two parts, yet one can sense a clear unity throughout the whole book. This unity is related to the underlying subject that the different authors, each in their own way and from their own background, try to reveal. They use related, and overlapping terms such as ‘the suchness of things’, ‘dancing and shaping lives’, ‘presenting a meaning beyond words, presenting the unpresentable, experiencing’, in order to bring to our awareness the genuine importance of the non-conceptual, next to the conceptual. Several authors moreover take on a reflective, and at times even a self-reflective stance, pointing to the intrinsic relation between cultural aesthetics and ethics, making this book unique in its kind.
Globalization brings people and cultures together, producing, in addition to deep and rich encounters, exclusion, racism, xenophobia and asymmetries. The present book takes these issues implicitly as its starting point by thoroughly reflecting on them from a perspective of worldviews, as one of many approaches. More specifically, it focuses on people’s implicit and explicit interpretations and assumptions of the world, of themselves and of others. Often deeply rooted and hard to change, they have an important function, for without them we would continually need to question what we do and what we think. In their absolutist form, these assumptions may become a barrier for open-mindedness, and hence for deep intercultural understanding and exchange. We need to find a balance between both stances. Intercultural philosophy tries to fulfil this role, on the one hand by comparing different cultures on a deep philosophical level, and as a way to better understand each other’s core assumptions, and on the other hand by arguing for an intercultural philosophy grounded in specific cases. The contributions of this book conceive of "another possible world" which does not condemn cultural and religious diversity as a detonator for "Clashes of Civilizations", but rather welcomes it as a source of inspiration for all and of respect for the "different".
The articles collected in this volume point out that society as a whole is changing. Social change is due not only to changes in technology and economy, but also to the changing strategies and discourses of social scientists. To what exactly will this change lead in the 21st century? What kind of society lies ahead? In this book the reader will find many arguments and hints pertaining to these questions. She/he will be confronted by a plethora of enriching conceptions of the relationships between social sciences and social changes.
Quantum Structures and the Nature of Reality is a collection of papers written for an interdisciplinary audience about the quantum structure research within the International Quantum Structures Association. The advent of quantum mechanics has changed our scientific worldview in a fundamental way. Many popular and semi-popular books have been published about the paradoxical aspects of quantum mechanics. Usually, however, these reflections find their origin in the standard views on quantum mechanics, most of all the wave-particle duality picture. Contrary to relativity theory, where the meaning of its revolutionary ideas was linked from the start with deep structural changes in the geometrical nature of our world, the deep structural changes about the nature of our reality that are indicated by quantum mechanics cannot be traced within the standard formulation. The study of the structure of quantum theory, its logical content, its axiomatic foundation, has been motivated primarily by the search for their structural changes. Due to the high mathematical sophistication of this quantum structure research, no books have been published which try to explain the recent results for an interdisciplinary audience. This book tries to fill this gap by collecting contributions from some of the main researchers in the field. They reveal the steps that have been taken towards a deeper structural understanding of quantum theory.
The subject “Systems sciences and cybernetics” is the outcome of the convergence of a number of trends in a larger current of thought devoted to the growing complexity of (primarily social) objects and arising in response to the need for globalized treatment of such objects. This has been magnified by the proliferation and publication of all manner of quantitative scientific data on such objects, advances in the theories on their inter-relations, the enormous computational capacity provided by IT hardware and software and the critical revisiting of subject-object interaction, not to mention the urgent need to control the efficiency of complex systems, where “efficiency” is understood to mean the ability to find a solution to many social problems, including those posed on a planetary scale. The result has been the forging of a new, academically consolidated scientific trend going by the name of Systems Theory and Cybernetics, with a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary focus and therefore apt for understanding realities still regarded to be inescapably chaotic. This subject entry is subdivided into four sections. The first, an introduction to systemic theories, addresses the historic development of the most commonly used systemic approaches, from new concepts such as the so-called “geometry of thinking” or the systemic treatment of “non-systemic identities” to the taxonomic, entropic, axiological and ethical problems deriving from a general “systemic-cybernetic” conceit. Hence, the focus in this section is on the historic and philosophical aspects of the subject. Moreover, it may be asserted today that, beyond a shadow of a doubt, problems, in particular problems deriving from human interaction but in general any problem regardless of its nature, must be posed from a systemic perspective, for otherwise the obstacles to their solution are insurmountable. Reaching such a perspective requires taking at least the following well-known steps: a) statement of the problem from the determinant variables or phenomena; b) adoption of theoretical models showing the interrelationships among such variables; c) use of the maximum amount of – wherever possible quantitative – information available on each; d) placement of the set of variables in an environment that inevitably pre-determines the problem. That epistemology would explain the substantial development of the systemic-cybernetic approach in recent decades. The articles in the second section deal in particular with the different methodological approaches developed when confronting real problems, from issues that affect humanity as a whole to minor but specific questions arising in human organizations. Certain sub-themes are discussed by the various authors – always from a didactic vantage –, including: problem discovery and diagnosis and development of the respective critical theory; the design of ad hoc strategies and methodologies; the implementation of both qualitative (soft system methodologies) and formal and quantitative (such as the “General System Problem Solver” or the “axiological-operational” perspective) approaches; cross-disciplinary integration; and suitable methods for broaching psychological, cultural and socio-political dynamisms. The third section is devoted to cybernetics in the present dual meaning of the term: on the one hand, control of the effectiveness of communication and actions, and on the other, the processes of self-production of knowledge through reflection and the relationship between the observing subject and the observed object when the latter is also observer and the former observed. Known as “second order cybernetics”, this provides an avenue for rethinking the validity of knowledge, such as for instance when viewed through what is known as “bipolar feedback”: processes through which interactions create novelty, complexity and diversity. Finally, the fourth section centres around artificial and computational intelligence, addressing sub-themes such as “neural networks”, the “simulated annealing” that ranges from statistical thermodynamics to combinatory problem-solving, such as in the explanation of the role of adaptive systems, or when discussing the relationship between biological and computational intelligence.
How do scientists approach science? Scientists, sociologists and philosophers were asked to write on this intriguing problem and to display their results at the International Congress `Einstein Meets Magritte'. The outcome of their effort can be found in this rather unique book, presenting all kinds of different views on science. Quantum mechanics is a discipline which deserves and receives special attention in this book, mainly because it is fascinating and, hence, appeals to the general public. This book not only contains articles on the introductory level, it also provides new insights and bold, even provocative proposals. That way, the reader gets acquainted with `science in the making', sitting in the front row. The contributions have been written for a broad interdisciplinary audience of scholars and students.
Interrogating the concepts of allegiance and identity in a globalised world involves renewing our understanding of membership and participation within and beyond the nation-state. Allegiance can be used to define a singular national identity and common connection to a nation-state. In a global context, however, we need more dynamic conceptions to understand the importance of maintaining diversity and building allegiance with others outside borders. Understanding how allegiance and identity are being reconfigured today provides valuable insights into important contemporary debates around citizenship. This book reveals how public and international law understand allegiance and identity. Each involves viewing the nation-state as fundamental to concepts of allegiance and identity, but they also see the world slightly differently. With contributions from philosophers, political scientists and social psychologists, the result is a thorough appraisal of allegiance and identity in a range of socio-legal contexts.