EINSTEIN MEETS MAGRITTE: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY REFLECTION EINSTEIN MEETS MAGRITTE: An Interdisciplinary Reflection on Science, Nature, Art, Human Action and Society Series Editor Diederik Aerts, Center Leo Apostel, Vrije Universiteit Brüssel, Belgium

Volume 1 Einstein Meets Magritte: An Interdisciplinary Reflection The White Book of 'Einstein Meets Magritte' Edited by Diederik Aerts, Jan Broekaert and Ernest Mathijs

Volume 2 Science and Art The Red Book of 'Einstein Meets Magritte' Edited by Diederik Aerts, Ernest Mathijs and Bert Mosselmans

Volume 3 Science, Technology, and Social Change The Orange Book of 'Einstein Meets Magritte' Edited by Diederik Aerts, Serge Gutwirth, Sonja Smets and Luk Van Langenhove

Volume 4 World Views and the Problem of Synthesis The Yellow Book of 'Einstein Meets Magritte' Edited by Diederik Aerts, Hubert Van Belle and Jan Van der Veken

Volume 5 A World in Transition: Humankind and Nature The Green Book of 'Einstein Meets Magritte' Edited by Diederik Aerts, Jan Broekaert and Willy Weyns

Volume 6 Metadebates on Science The Blue Book of 'Einstein Meets Magritte' Edited by Gustaaf C. Cornelis, Sonja Smets, Jean Paul Van Bendegem

Volume 7 Quantum Structures and the Nature of Reality The Indigo Book of 'Einstein Meets Magritte' Edited by Diederik Aerts and Jarosfow Pykacz

Volume 8 The Evolution of Complexity The Violet Book of 'Einstein Meets Magritte' Edited by Francis Heylighen, Johan Bollen and Alexander Riegler

VOLUME 1 Einstein Meets Magritte: An Interdisciplinary Reflection

The White Book of "Einstein Meets Magritte"

Edited by

Diederik Aerts, Jan Broekaert and Ernest Mathijs Center Leo Apostel, Brussels Free University, Brussels, Belgium

with contributions by John Ziman • Bas C. van Fraassen • Barbara Herrnstein Smith Robert M. Pirsig • Ilya Prigogine • Constantin Piron • Rom Harre Diederik Aerts • Francisco J. Varela • William H. Calvin Adolf Grünbaum • Zygmunt Bauman • W. Brian Arthur

VUB mm VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT BRÜSSEL BELGIUM

SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V. Library of congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

ISBN 978-94-010-5979-4 ISBN 978-94-011-4704-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-011-4704-0

Printed on acid-free paper

Cover Image after "Le Therapeute" by Rene Magritte. Copyright C. Herscovici, SABAM - Belgium 1999.

All Rights Reserved © 1999 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers and Vrije Universiteit Brüssel in 1999 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1999 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner. Table of contents

General Introduction Vll Diederik Aerts

Editorial Introduction: Somewhere over the Rainbow xv Diederik Aerts, Jan Broekaert and Ernest Mathijs

1. Einstein Meets Magritte: The Scholar, the Muse and the Barfly 1 Diederik Aerts

2. Basically, It's Purely Academic 11 John Ziman

3. The Manifest Image and the Scientific Image 29 Bas C. van Fraassen

4. Microdynamics of Incommensurability: Philosophy of Science Meets Science Studies 53 Barbara Herrnstein Smith

5. Subjects, Objects, Data and Values 79 Robert M. Pirsig

6. Einstein and Magritte. A Study of Creativity 99 Ilya Prigogine

7. Quanta and Relativity: Two Failed Revolutions 107 Constantin Piron 8. The Redundancy of Spacetime: Relativity from Cusa to Einstein 113 Rom Harre

9. The Stuff the World Is Made of: Physics and Reality 129 Diederik Aerts

10. Dasein's Brain: Phenomenology Meets Cognitive Science 185 Francisco J. Varela

11. What Creativity in Science and Art Tell Us about How the 199 Brain Must Work William H. Calvin

v VI TABLE OF CONTENTS

12. The Hermeneutic Versus the Scientific Conception of 219 Psychoanalysis: An Unsuccessful Effort to Chart a Via Media for the Human Sciences Adolf Griinbaum

13. Immortality, Biology, Computers 241 Zygmunt Bauman

14. The End of Certainty in Economics 255 W. Brian Arthur

Index 267 DIEDERIK AERTS

EINSTEIN MEETS MAGRITTE GENERAL INTRODUCTION

The series of books 'Einstein meets Magritte' presented here originates from an international interdisciplinary conference with the same title, which took place in Brussels in Spring 1995. On the eve of the third millennium, we assembled scientists and artists to reflect together on the deep nature of reality and the knowledge and skill humankind has gathered in this field. We had decided to call this meeting 'Einstein meets Magritte' because we believed that meaningful keys could be found at the place where the two meet. It is the way of the world that has made Einstein and Magritte into icons of our culture. The purpose of the conference was to reflect and debate without fear on the most profound and timeless questions. On one of those evenings, when the talks and discussions were long and exhausting and the press were doing all they could to get Albert Ein• stein and Rene Magritte in front of the microphones and cameras, a few of my most loyal aides and myself succeeded in getting them safely and quietly to a taxi, which then carried us off into the Brussels night. We got out at Manneken Pis, since that was on Einstein's list, and we con• cealed ourselves among the many tourists who were coming and going, expressing their wonder in every language under the sun at the famous little statue. And one of us was taking pictures: Einstein and Magritte leaning against the railings, with us beside them, and one more, arm in arm, and then another in case the first was no good, when suddenly I felt a heavy slap on my shoulder: "How you doing, mate?" It was Jacky and his inseparable girlfriends Nicole and Sylvie, and everyone embraced everyone else. I introduced Albert and Rene, and in• terest was immediately shown, and I had my heart in my mouth, because Jacky was a painter, poet and urban philosopher. We walked together through the alleys of Brussels in dismal Belgian rain, over cobblestones that glistened in the street lamps. When we had provided for the inner man with 'Rabbit in Beer' and 'Mussels with fries', and finally a 'Dame Blanche' topped with warm chocolate sauce as apotheosis, Jacky enticed us to his house in the Rue Haute where we threw ourselves into deep, soft armchairs. Albert and Rene were offered the best places and as always Jacky told the story

vii

© 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Vlll DIEDERIK AERTS of his life and discussed his rightness, as he did repeatedly, with a con• fidence and suppleness that distinguished him so sharply from modern science. Albert listened enthralled and Rene was fascinated, and once more my heart was in my mouth, but Nicole winked reassuringly, and Sylvie brought us snacks on cushions of Brussels lace and sweet white wine in tall, old-fashioned crystal glasses. The topic of discussion for the evening turned out to be 'the doubts of modern science'. In science there is not a single hypothesis for which one cannot find two groups of hard-working scientists, one of which can 'prove' a hypothesis while the other can 'prove' its negation. And the more fundamental and important the question is, the more clearly the situation turns out like this. "It's crazy," maintained Jacky, "In fact science states that one doesn't know anything anymore." "That's right," said Albert, "Truth is not a simple concept, and I believe that the history of science makes it clear how often erroneous hypotheses have been believed over the centuries." "A good thing too," replied Rene, "Things can only happen as a result of the movement brought about by that constant doubt." Meanwhile Sylvie came to join us and handed round pictures of the exhibitions of Jacky's paintings and poems. Jacky suddenly got very ex• cited, as if something had inspired him, and he leapt up and vanished into his studio. A few minutes later he returned with his palette and brush poised. Before I could stop him he had started painting violently right at the spot where Albert and Rene were sitting. A large, gossamer• thin piece of Brussels lace gradually took shape and Albert and Rene vanished. Fortunately, my young assistants, Jacky's girlfriends and my• self got away with just a few vicious daubs of paint in the face. The series of eight volumes introduced here are not just the results of the conference, as would be the case with a record of the proceedings. The authors were invited to write with the events at the conference in the back of their mind, so that the books would form a second phase in the process of thought set in motion at the conference. A second phase more clearly crystallised than the self-organising forum that arose during the conference, but one which focuses on the same timeless questions and problems. The whole ensemble was already streamlined at the conference into a number of main topics named after the colours of the rainbow - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet, as well as white, the syn• thesis of all colours. This order was maintained and led to eight separate books in the series. EINSTEIN MEETS MAGRITTE lX

Volume 1: Einstein meets Magritte: an Interdisciplinary Reflection The White Book of Einstein meets Magritte

The white book contains more fully developed versions of the contribu• tions made by the keynote speakers at the conference. So this white book covers various scientific topics. In his article, 'Basically, it's purely aca• demic', John Ziman asks himself what 'basic research' really is in today's world. In his contribution, 'The manifest image and the scientific image', Bas van Fraassen analyses the considerable differences between the the• oretical scientific description of the world and the way it appears to us. He argues that most formulations of this problem may themselves be tendentious metaphysics, full of false contrasts, and that insistence on a radical separation between science and what we have apart from science, and on the impossibility of accommodating science without surrender, may be a way of either idolising or demonising science rather than under• standing it. In the 'Microdynamics of incommensurability: philosophy of science meets science studies', Barbara Herrnstein-Smith examines the bemusing but instructive logical, rhetorical and cognitive dynamics of contemporary theoretical controversy about science. In his contribution 'Subjects, objects, data and values', Robert Pirsig proposes a radical integration of science and value that does no harm to either. It is argued that values can exist as a part of scientific data, but outside any subject or object. This argument opens a door to a 'metaphysics of value' that provides a fundamentally different but not unscientific way of under• standing the world. Ilya Prigogine discusses in 'Einstein and Magritte: a study of creativity', the global transformation of a classical science which was based on certainties into a new science that takes possibilities as its basic concepts. Constantin Piron demonstrates in his contribu• tion 'Quanta and relativity: two failed revolutions' that none of the two great revolutions in physics, quantum mechanics and relativity theory, have actually been digested by the physics community. He claims that the vast majority of physicists still cling to the idea of a non-existent void full of little particles, in the spirit of Leibniz or Descartes. Rom Harre reflects on the significance of the theory of relativity. In his article 'The redundancy of spacetime: relativity from Cusa to Einstein', he defends the hypothesis that relativity theory is best interpreted as a grammar for coordinating narratives told by different observers. In his contribu• tion 'The stuff the world is made of: physics and reality', Diederik Aerts analyses the consequences of the recent advances in quantum mechanics, theoretically as well as experimentally, for the nature of reality. He anal• yses the deep conceptual paradoxes in the light of these recent data and tries to picture a coherent model of the world. In his contribution 'Da- x DIED ERIK AERTS sein's brain: phenomenology meets cognitive science', Francisco Varela puts forward the hypothesis that the relation between brain processes and living human experience is the really hard problem of consciousness. He argues that science needs to be complemented by a deep scientific investigation of experience itself to move this major question beyond the sterile oppositions of dualism and reductionism. In his contribution 'What creativity in art and science tell us about how the brain must work' William Calvin defends the prospects for a mental Darwinism that operates on the milliseconds to minutes time scale, forming novel ideas and sentences never previously expressed. Adolf Grunbaum in his article 'The hermeneutic versus the scientific conception of psychoanal• ysis: an unsuccessful effort to chart a via media for the human sciences' argues that the so called 'hermeneutic' reconstruction of psychoanalytic theory and therapy proposed by Karl Jaspers, Paul Ricoeur and Jurgen Habermas fails both as a channel and as alleged prototype for the study of human nature. In his article 'Immortality, biology and computers', Zygmunt Bauman analyses the shift that postmodern society has pro• voked regarding the concept of immortality. He points out that strategies of collective and individual immortality have shifted from the modern deconstruction of death to a postmodern deconstruction of immortality, and points out that the possible consequences of this process need to be taken into consideration. Brian Arthur, in his article 'The end of cer• tainty in economics', points out that our economy is very non-classical, meaning that it is based on essentially self-referential systems of beliefs about future economic conditions. He argues that our economy is inher• ently complex, subjective, ever-changing, and to an unavoidable degree ill-defined. Volume 2: Science and Art The Red Book of Einstein meets M agritte And then Magritte comes in. Many obvious differences exist between science and art. But the Science and Art volume of this series addresses not only these differences but also the possibilities of crossing several of the gaps between science and art. Several contributions deal with socio• logical and philosophical elaborations of the similarities and differences between science and art, while others approach science from an artistic point of view and art from a scientific point of view. The volume also considers several approaches that attempt to go beyond the classical dichotomy between the two activities. In a special section, attention is paid to the particular role played by perception in both science and art as a regulator of human understanding. Together, these contributions strive for an intensive interaction between science and art, and to a con- EINSTEIN MEETS MAGRITTE Xl sideration of them as converging rather than diverging. It is to be hoped that both science and art will benefit from this attempt. Volume 3: Science, Technology and Social Change The Orange Book of Einstein meets M agritte The major subject of the orange book is that society as a whole is chang• ing, due to changes in technology, economy and the changing strategies and discourses of social scientists. The collected articles in the orange stream discuss a range of specific societal problems related to the sub• ject of social change, the topics of the articles range from the scale of for instance sociology of health and psychohistory to more specific social problems like for instance anorexia nervosa, art academies and the infor• mation superhighway. Although the authors approach different subject matters from dissimilar perspectives and work with various methods, all the papers are related to the theme of science, technology and social change. In the orange book the reader will find a lot of arguments and hints pertaining to questions like: To what exactly will this social change lead in the 21st century? What kind of society lies ahead? She/he will be confronted to a plethora of enriching conceptions of the relationships between social sciences and social changes. Volume 4: World Views and the Problem of Synthesis The Yellow Book of Einstein meets Magritte A rapidly evolving world is seen to entail ideological, social, political, cultural and scientific fragmentation. Many cultures, subcultures and cultural fragments state their views assertively, while science progresses in increasingly narrowly defined areas of inquiry, widening not only the chasm between specialists and the layman, but also preventing specialists from having an overall view of their discipline. What are the motive forces behind this process of fragmentation, what are its effects? Are they truly inhospitable to the idea of synthesis, or do they call out, more urgently than ever before, for new forms of synthesis? What conditions would have to be met by contemporary synthesis? These and related questions will be addressed in the yellow book. Volume 5: A World in Transition; Humankind and Nature The Green Book of Einstein meets Magritte iA World in Transition; Humankind and Nature' is appropriately enti• tled after its aim for an intrinsic property of reality: change. Of major concern, in this era of transformation, is the extensive and profound in• teraction of humankind with nature. The global scaled, social and tech• nological project of humankind definitely involves a myriad of changes of Xll DIEDERIK AERTS the ecosphere. This book develops, from the call for an interdisciplinary synthesis and respect for plurality, acknowledging the evolving scientific truth, the need for an integrated but inevitably provisional world view. Contributors from different parts of the world focus on four modes of change: i) Social change and the individual condition, ii) Complex evo• lution and fundamental emergent transformations, iii) Ecological trans• formation and responsibility inquiries, iv) The economic-ecological and socio-technical equilibria. Primarily reflecting on the deep transforma• tions of humankind and on the relationship between humans and nature it adresses major points of contemporary concern.

Volume 6: Metadebates on Science The Blue Book of Einstein meets M agritte

This book provides a meta-disciplinary reflection on science, nature, hu• man action and society. It pertains to a dialogue between scientists, sociologists of science, historians and philosophers of science. It covers several topics: (1) the relation between science and philosophy, (2) new approaches to cognitive science, (3) reflections on classical thinking and contemporary science, (4) empirical epistemology, (5) epistemology of quantum mechanics. Indeed, quantum mechanics is a discipline which deserves and receives special attention here, for it still is a fascinating and intriguing discipline from a historiographical and philosophical point of view. This book does not only contain articles on a general level, it also provides new insights and bold, even provocative theories on the meta-level. That way, the reader gets acquainted with 'science in the making', sitting in the front row. Volume 7: Quantum Structures and the Nature of Reality The Indigo Book of Einstein meets M agritte

This book refers to the satellite symposium that was organised by the International Quantum Structure Association (IQSA) at Einstein meets Magritte. The IQSA is a society for the advancement and dissemination of theories about structures based on quantum mechanics in their phys• ical, mathematical, philosophical, applied and interdisciplinary aspects. The book contains several contributions presenting different fields of re• search in quantum structures. A great effort has been made to present some of the more technical aspects of quantum structures for a wide audience. Some parts of the articles are explanatory, sketching the his• torical development of research into quantum structures, while other parts make an effort to analyse the way the study of quantum structures has contributed to an understanding of the nature of our reality. EINSTEIN MEETS MAGRITTE Xlll

Volume 8: The Evolution of Complexity The Violet Book of Einstein meets M agritte

The violet book collects the contributions that consider theories of evo• lution and self-organisation, on the one hand, and systems theory and cybernetics, on the other hand. Both can add to the development of an integrated world view. The basic idea is that evolution leads to the spon• taneous emergence of systems of higher and higher complexity or "in• telligence": from elementary particles, via atoms, molecules, living cells, multicellular organisms, plants, and animals to human beings, culture and society. This perspective makes it possible to unify knowledge from presently separate disciplines: physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, sociology, etc. The volume thus wishes to revive the transdisciplinary tradition of general systems theory by integrating the recently devel• oped insights of the "complex adaptive systems" approach, pioneered among others by the Santa Fe Institute. Even these books only signify a single phase in the ever-recurring process of thought and creation regarding the basic questions on the reality that surrounds us and our place in it. Brussels, July 17, 1998.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The process of going public with the 'Einstein meets Magritte' books as a sequel to the conference has been a quite formidable task. From the first initiatives of the conference organisers themselves and the thoughtful, eminent and enthusi• ast contributors, to the many editors and lay-outers at CLEA, all have spent countless efforts in finishing the series towards a good ending. We wish to thank everybody who realised or helped in some moment or part of this publication. Some special thanks for the overall design and trouble-shooting (electronically and otherwise) are due to Didier Durlinger. The editorial process of all the volumes was realised with the aid of AWl-grant Caw96/54a of the Flemish Community and Caw96/54c for the Yellow Book. Some of the scientific research papers are acknowledging their support as well: The papers by Diederik Aerts in the White, Orange, Yellow, and Green books were realised with the aid of AWl-grant Caw96/54a of the Flemish Community. The introduction to the Worldviews Project in the Yellow Book by Jan Van der Veken was realised with the aid of AWl-grant Caw96/54c of the Flemish Community. The funding by the "FWO-Onderzoeksgemeenschap. Onderzoek naar de constructie van integrerende wereldbeelden" was applied in realising the Yellow Book of Einstein meets Magritte. D. AERTS, J. BROEKAERT AND E. MATHIJS

SOMEWHERE OVER THE RAINBOW: EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION

The colours of the volumes of the Einstein meets Magritte series cor• respond to the colours of the rainbow. They are diverse but closely connected and present no hierarchy. Yet they are not randomly placed alongside each other. The same goes for the contributions in this vol• ume: Einstein meets Magritte: An Interdisciplinary Reflection, which is the white book of the Einstein meets Magritte series. The white book contains the papers of the invited speakers at the Ein• stein meets Magritte conference, held in May and June 1995 at Brussels Free University. The resulting articles were initially meant to express the theme of the conference: an interdisciplinary reflection on science, nature, art, human action and society. All of the articles in this volume do elaborate on this theme, but somewhere along the road the volume grew out to become more than an expression of a conference theme. The articles have one thing in common: they all address some of the most fundamental questions of science in the world of today. They carry the experience, research and conclusions of 13 renowned scientists and writ• ers. The articles not only deal with the sciences and with contemporary life, they are science. As such, this volume presents a state-of-the-art of science today, in all its diversity. All the contributions approach the fundamental questions from differ• ent angles. With different approaches come different observations, and hence no general and decisive conclusions are presented in this volume.

In the first contribution, John Ziman tries to unravel what basic science is and stands for. He compares Einstein's 'basic research' with contem• porary conceptions of science. What do people mean when they say that basic science should be fostered? For Ziman, the conventional responses to this important question are confused and contradictory. Historical ac• counts are out of date. Philosophical criteria are too reductionist. Sociol• ogists deconstruct basic research entirely. Psychological interpretations are too self-indulgent. Populists deplore its elitism. Economic theory discounts it heavily. Industry merely wants to exploit it. Academia cel• ebrates its pure irrelevance~and yet policy-makers imagine it can be planned. Perhaps Magritte tells us that the nature of basic scientific research is a suitable theme for basic metascientific research.

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© 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers. XVI D. A E R T S, J. B ROE K A E R TAN DE. MAT H IJ S

In the second contribution of this volume, Bas van Fraassen considers the image of the world, in relation to the scientific image. For him, there are striking differences between the scientific theoretical description of the world and the way it appears to us. The consequent task of relating sci• ence to 'the world we live in' has been a problem throughout the history of science. But has this problem been made impossible to resolve by how it is formulated? van Fraassen elaborates on several possible answers to this question. Some say that beside the successive world-pictures of sci• ence there is the world-picture that preceded all these and continues to exist side-by-side, elucidated by more humanistic philosophers. Wilfrid Sellars codified this conviction in his dichotomy of 'scientific image' and 'manifest image'. Others say that all world-pictures are transient, evolve, conflict with and replace each other, undergo violent revolutions as well as periods of normal development, and may be incommensurable, allow• ing of no meaningful dialogue. All such formulations may themselves be tendentious metaphysics, full of false contrasts. Insistence on a radical separation between science and what we have apart from science, on the impossibility of accommodating science without surrender, may be a way of either idolising or demon ising science rather than understanding it. Barbara Herrnstein-Smith directs her attention towards the philosophy of science and science studies. Her article examines the bemusing but instructive logical, rhetorical and cognitive dynamics of contemporary theoretical controversy. It focuses on the recurrent non-engagements and mutually frustrating impasse between, on the one hand, those who-like philosopher of science Philip Kitcher in his recent The Advancement of Science-defend or attempt to rehabilitate traditional ideas of knowl• edge, truth, proof, objectivity, reason and reality and, on the other hand, theorists in fields such as history and sociology of science whose research and analyses have issued in more or less radical critiques of those ideas and more or less radical rethinkings of the operations of science itself. Robert M. Pirsig approaches science from a distinct angle. He proposes a rational integration of science and value that does not do violence to either. For Pirsig, in the past, rejection of 'values' by scientific method has helped prevent corruption into religious dogma, social propaganda and other forms of wishful thinking, but it has also prevented scientific explanation of huge areas of human experience: art, morals and human purpose. This inexplicability undermines the universality and validity of scientific thought. Pirsig argues that values can exist as a part of scientific data, but outside of any subject or object. This argument opens the door to a 'Metaphysics of Value' that provides a fundamentally different but not unscientific way of understanding the world. SOMEWHERE OVER THE RAINBOW xvii

In his contribution, Ilya Prigogine deals with one of the basic charac• teristics of Western science since Galileo and Newton: the formulation of the laws of nature which are both deterministic and time-reversible. Today classical mechanics has been superseded by quantum theory and relativity. Still, the basic characteristics of Newton's laws, namely deter• minism and time-reversibility have survived. In contrast, on all levels of experience, be it in cosmology, geology, biology or human societies, we observe evolutionary patterns. How then are there patterns rooted in the laws of physics? Prigogine shows that once we incorporate instabilities and chaos into their formulation, we can overcome this contradiction. The fundamental laws of nature then take on a new meaning. The role of creativity in this interpretation is given special consideration. Constantin Piron builds his argumentation around similar lines. He spe• cifically considers what he calls the failed revolutions of quanta and rel• ativity. Bohr suggested that the usual rules of mechanics be abandoned to explain the hydrogen atom spectrum. Louis de Broglie associated a wave with each particle, and Erwin Schrodinger provided a non-local equation for the de Broglie particle wave. The use of the term 'aether' was rendered obsolete by Einstein after the discovery that the velocity of light was the same in every direction and independent of the chosen reference frame. Nevertheless, recent literature is indicative of how the vast majority of physicists still cling to the idea of a non-existing void full of little particles in the spirit of Leibniz or Descartes. This implies that quanta and relativity revolutions have yet to come. Rom Harre provides a historical account of special relativity, and con• nects it with the redundancy of space-time. It is not always easy to see whether an important theory in physics is about the world or a way of expressing the rules for talking about the world. Therefore Harre concen• trates on the important differences in interpreting relativity theory, par• ticularly with respect to the question of the real existence of Minkowski space. A look at the history of relativity, from Nicholas of Cusa to Galileo to Einstein shows that special relativity is best interpreted as a grammar for coordinating narratives told by different observers. This viewpoint has consequences for other problems in physics, such as the EPR exper• iment. Diederik Aerts investigates in his contribution 'the stuff the world is made of: physics and reality' recent findings and insights of theoretical physics. Two fundamental theories have reshaped our view of reality: quantum mechanics and relativity theory. Aerts analyses in which way some of the paradoxes of quantum mechanics are due to shortcomings of the axiomatic structure of the theory and others point to real new XVUl D. A E R T S, J. B ROE K A E R TAN DE. MAT H I J S and mysterious aspects of reality. He also points out the deep problem introduced by relativity theory as to the question 'what is reality?'. Through his analysis he elaborates a view on reality, that he calls 'the creation discovery view', in which creation and discovery cooperate as two fundamental aspects of the process of reality. Francisco Varela's article deals with the relation between brain processes and living human experience. In his view, both can be seen as the re• ally hard problems of consciousness. Varela's article takes up some of the most important alternatives today in dealing with this problem. Its main proposal is that science needs to be complemented with a sustained, dis• ciplined analysis of experience itself to move this major question beyond the sterile oppositions of dualism or reductionism. William H. Calvin devotes attention to the role of creativity. For Calvin, creativity on the forefronts of both science and art consists of trying new combinations of old things in the hope of discovering a good fit-though doing a great deal of the groping off-line, thinking before acting. Such is at the heart of intelligence (to paraphrase Piaget, intelligence is what you use when you don't know what to do, when there is no tried-and-true routine to fall back on). But mechanistically, random combinations of old things have always seemed improbable, as most random combinations are nonsense (and sometimes dangerous). We know, however, that the Darwinian process shapes up quality from random recombinations: new species in millennia and new antibodies during the days and weeks of an immune response. Calvin discusses the prospects for a mental Darwinism that operates on the milliseconds to minutes time scale, shaping up novel ideas and sentences never before spoken. Adolf Griinbaum aims to chart a via media for the human sciences by concentrating on psychoanalysis. He argues that the so-called 'hermeneu• tic' reconstruction of psychoanalytic theory and therapy proposed by Karl Jaspers, Paul Ricoeur and Jiirgen Habermas fails to multiply as a viaduct and alleged prototype for the study of human nature. One key to the failure is the misconstrual of so-called 'meaning connections' be• tween mental states in their bearing on casual connections between such states. Zygmunt Bauman concentrates on immortality, and considers its evolu• tion from modernity to postmodernity. In Bauman's article, conscious• ness of mortality and the dream of the transcendence of death are the constant moving force of cultural creation. The postmodern era, however, has modified the cultural perception of time in a significant way. Strate• gies of collective and individual immortality have shifted from modern SOMEWHERE OVER THE RAINBOW XIX deconstruction of death to a postmodern deconstruction of immortal• ity. Bio-technology engenders individualisation of collective immortality, whereas electronic technology brings about collectivisation of individual immortality. Bauman urges us to take the possible consequences of this process into consideration. Finally, Brian Arthur considers the practice of economics and economy in general to announce the end of certainty in economics. For Arthur, standard economics reduces the problems that concern us in economy to well-defined mathematical ones that can be 'solved' by deductive logic. But often in actual fact, our economic actions depend on our beliefs about others' future actions and beliefs, and these depend in turn on their beliefs about our actions and beliefs, so that deductive logic-the theorist's standby-becomes self-referential and breaks down. In reality humans use little deductive logic in economy. Instead they form sub• jective beliefs about future economic conditions and 'test' these against conditions created in large part by other's subjective beliefs and expec• tations; and these compete, co-evolve, form patterns, appear, and decay over time. In Arthur's view, our economy is therefore a 'Magritte Econ• omy': one that is inherently complex, subjective, ever-changing, and to an unavoidable degree ill-defined.

Albert Einstein and Rene Magritte meet each other where these articles meet. To know where that place lies is to read the articles, and to think. Think of an arena where Einsteinian basic science, fundamental and pure, meets Magrittean emotion and sensation; a place where logic not necessarily disappears but is superseded by surprise, amazement and a general sense of wonder.