Einstein Meets Magritte: An Interdisciplinary Reflection

Einstein Meets Magritte: An Interdisciplinary Reflection
Author: Diederik Aerts
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9401147043

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.

Science and Art

Science and Art
Author: Diederik Aerts
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 262
Release: 1999-09-30
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780792357582

How do science, producing knowledge and technology, and art, producing revelations and sensations, confront each other? We have taken up the two myths of Albert Einstein and René Magritte to address this question. The meeting between Einstein and Magritte is presented as an experiment, with which we hope to go beyond the many programmatical appeals, in order to cut across art and science. The experiment brings together scientists, artists and philosophers who have already - in their own distinctive ways - taken the path towards interdisciplinarity. This book presents their different attitudes, and encloses new perspectives and insights. The contributions have been written for a broad audience of scholars, students and anyone interested in the similarities between science and art.

Quantum Structures and the Nature of Reality

Quantum Structures and the Nature of Reality
Author: Diederik Aerts
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 251
Release: 2013-04-17
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 9401728348

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.

Metadebates on Science

Metadebates on Science
Author: Gustaaf C. Cornelis
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 323
Release: 2013-11-11
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9401722455

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.

A World In Transition: Humankind and Nature

A World In Transition: Humankind and Nature
Author: Diederik Aerts
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 379
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 9400708564

A World in Transition, Humankind and Nature is appropriately entitled after its aim for an intrinsic property of reality: change. Of major concern, in this era of transformation, is the extensive and profound interaction of humankind with nature. The global-scale social and technological project of humankind definitely involves a myriad of changes of the ecosphere. This book develops, from the call for an interdisciplinary synthesis and respect of plurality, acknowledging the evolving scientific truth, to the need for an integrated but inevitably provisional worldview. Contributors from different parts of the world focus on four modes of change: (i) Social change and the individual condition, (ii) Complex evolution and fundamental emergent transformations, (iii) Ecological transformation and responsibility inquiries, (iv) The economic-ecological and socio-technical equilibria. Primarily concerned with the deep transformations of humankind and of the relationship between humans and nature, it is addressed to a broad and thinking public that wants to be kept informed.

World Views and the Problem of Synthesis

World Views and the Problem of Synthesis
Author: Diederik Aerts
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 487
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9401147086

This book considers philosophy to be more than mere reflection. Through philosophy, humankind can give meaning to the world. In part, this book re-evaluates the philosophy of Leo Apostel, who dedicated his life to the investigation of the use of philosophy in everyday life. But it is also a presentation of international research carried out along the lines of the worldviews project. The contributions address not only professional philosophers, but also students, teachers, academics and everyone interested in the relationship between philosophy and the world.

Culture and Art

Culture and Art
Author: Zygmunt Bauman
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2021-06-11
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1509545468

The sociological imagination and the artistic imagination have been historically intertwined, at once reciprocal and conflicting, complementary and tensional. This connection is nowhere more apparent than in the work of Zygmunt Bauman. His conception and practice of sociology were always infused with a literary and artistic sensibility. He wrote extensively on the relationship between sociology and the arts, and especially on sociology and literature; he frequently drew on literary writers in his exploration and elucidation of sociological problems; and he was an avid and passionate consumer and practitioner of art, especially film and photography. This volume brings together hitherto unknown or rare pieces by Bauman on the themes of culture and art, including previously unpublished material from the Bauman Archive at the University of Leeds. A substantial introduction by the editors provides readers with a lucid guide through this material and develops connections to Bauman’s other works. The first volume in a series of books that will make available the lesser-known writings of one of the most influential social thinkers of our time, Culture and Art will be of interest to students and scholars across the arts, humanities and social sciences, and to a wider readership.