Foreword 2

When I started these pages I was plagued with doubts how they will be received. The topic is difficult and the concepts expressed appear to go against our everyday experiences. Even a hint that things are not as we see them, may lead us to uncertainty of what is "real" triggering emotional reactions. However, I feel that many recent and not so recent discoveries, that question what we call "reality" or "objectivity", need to be addressed to establish a new coherence of the scientific approach. The approach I am suggesting, raises more questions than answers, but I hope that attempts to answer them might lead us to new insights.

At this pages I propose a separation of - what we call "objectivity" or "reality" - into two distinctive unambiguous concepts: "out there" and "our description of the world around us and ourselves within it". This separation enables a conceptual shift in which the "out there" may, to some extent, correspond to "our description of the world and ourselves within it". It also "liberates" the "out there" from our perception of it and lets it be what it always has been - a big unknown and our ultimate challenge.

However, this proposed separation is not intended to block our way towards the "out there". It is intended to focus our intention on improving "our description of the world an ourselves within it" to extend our reach towards the "out there".

Given the controversy surrounding the world of quantum physics, I was reluctant to venture into it until I read "The Non-local Universe" by Robert Nadeau and Menas Kafatos. Their thoughts appear to be heading in a similar direction mine do, although stopping short in drawing conclusions I consider crucial.

Since the first release of these pages in October 2000, I have been exploring logic and its relations to the concept of cause & effect driven deterministic systems. In progress I discovered some unexpected correlations in the emerging complexity theory within the field of Artificial Intelligence/Life. Although my approach differs in a fundamental way (looking from the elusive point of emerged), there seems to be quite a few compatible concepts and I'm looking forward to further developments in this area.

It should be noted however, that concepts like "the whole is greater than sum of its parts" and self-organising matter imply a tendency that is directly opposite to the tendency of the matter expressed in the second law of thermodynamics. It also implies a possibility that we could have something out of nothing. Despite the claims that it applies to dissipative systems only, this may prove to be a major hurdle in acceptance of the complexity theory by classical (orthodox) scientists.

The feedback (or lack of it) on the pages of the first edition produced only minor changes and I hope for better with the following additions: