Diederik Aerts quotes
A world view is a system of co-ordinates or a frame of reference in which everything presented to us by our diverse experiences can be placed. It is a symbolic system of representation that allows us to integrate everything we know about the world and ourselves into a global picture, one that illuminates reality as it is presented to us within a certain culture.
Diederik Aerts
World views, as related to the sciences, ethics, arts, politics and religions, are integral parts of all cultures. They have a strongly motivating and inspiring function. A socially shared view of the whole gives a culture a sense of direction, confidence and self-esteem. Moreover, interactions between cultures change constantly.
Diederik Aerts
Although world views grow organic ly and historically, they can also be developed. The construction of world views is comparable to the work of cartographers in antiquity and in the Middle Ages. They mapped out the world on the basis of information from sailors, mer chants and explorers.
Diederik Aerts
In the construction of world views one can distinguish seven important tasks that correspond with the various components of a world view and that must provide an answer to a number of fundamental questions. First we must design a model of the world. What is the world like in which we live? How is the world structured and how does it function? What are the most suitable metaphors for speaking of the whole? Are mechanistic or organic models to be given preference? An explanation of reality must then follow. Why are the world and mankind as they are? Is a completely different world possible? What general explanatory principles apply?
Diederik Aerts
What is reality? What is space? And what is time? These are the three questions that we want to investigate taking into account the knowledge that we have gained by modern physics. Our intuitive prescientific conception of the world in relation with these three concepts is not very precise but could be summarised as follows.
- Reality is everything that exists now in the present. The past has been real but is not anymore and the future is what shall become real but is not yet.
- Space is the theatre where reality is in. It englobes all of reality.
Till the birth of relativity theory all physical theories where compatible with this intuitive scheme. But when relativity theory entered the scene, these intuitive conceptions of space and time, and what is less recognised even till today, also the conception of reality, has got into problems.
Diederik Aerts
In classical Newtonian physics there was a clear understanding of 'what reality is'. Indeed in this classical view, reality at a certain time is the collection of all what is actual at this time, and this is contained in 'the present'. Often it is stated that three dimensional space and one dimensional time have been substituted by four dimensional space-time in relativity theory, and as a consequence the classical concept of reality, as that what is 'present', cannot be retained. Is reality then the four dimensional manifold of relativity theory? And if so, what is then the meaning of 'change in time'?
Diederik Aerts
The classical concept of 'physical entity', be it particle, wave, field or system, has become a problematic concept since the advent of relativity theory and quantum mechanics. The recent developments in modern quantum mechanics, with the performance of delicate and precise experiments involving single quantum entities, manifesting explicit non-local behavior for these entities, brings essential new information about the nature of the concept of entity.
Diederik Aerts
A world view is a coherent collection of concepts and theorems that must allow us to construct a global image of the world, and in this way to understand as many elements of our experience as possible.
Societies, as well as individuals, have always contemplated deep questions relating to their being and becoming, and to the being and becoming of the world. The configuration of answers to these questions forms their world view. Research on world views, although we are convinced of its practical value and necessity, will always be primarily an expression of a theoretical interest. It reflects the unlimited openness of the human mind to reality as a whole. Even if this research would not appear to be of any immediate value or necessity – quod non – we still should promote and encourage it energetically, because it also expresses the most unselfish striving of humanity "the desire to know,” a property of "Homo sapiens sapiens.”.
Diederik Aerts
In our study of applying quantum to cognition we have identified five main aspects that play a fundamental role and that are specific to quantum structures as compared to classical structures. They are (i) contextual in influence (ii) emergence due to superposition, (iii) interference, (iv) entanglement and (v) quantum field theoretic aspects.
Diederik Aerts
