Inside Versus Outside, Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 1994
Endo- and Exo-Concepts of Observation and Knowledge in Physics, Philosophy and Cognitive Science
Coll. Springer Series in Synergetics, Vol. 63

In our daily lives we conceive of our surroundings as an objectively given reality. The world is perceived through our senses, and ~hese provide us, so we believe, with a faithful image of the world. But occ~ipnally we are forced to realize that our senses deceive us, e. g. , by illusions. For a while it was believed that the sensation of color is directly r~lated to the frequency of light waves, until E. Land (the inventor of the polaroid camera) showed in detailed experiments that our perception of, say, a colored spot depends on the colors of its surrounding. On the other hand, we may experience hallucinations or dreams as real. Quite evidently, the relationship between the "world" and our "brain" is intricate. Another strange problem is the way in which we perceive time or the "Now". Psychophysical experiments tell us that the psychological "Now" is an extended period of time in the sense of physics. The situation was made still more puzzling when, in the nineteen-twenties, Heisenberg and others realized that, by observing processes in the microscopic world of electrons and other elementary particles, we strongly interfere with that world. The outcome of experiments - at least in general - can only be predicted statistically. What is the nature ofthis strange relationship between "object" and "observer"? This is another crucial problem of the inside-outside or endo-exo dichotomy.

1. General Aspects.- Objectification as an Endo-Exo Transition.- Action Principles and Teleology.- Internal Time and Temporality.- Biological Evolution as a Process Viewed Internally.- Internal and External Representations of Mental Processes.- What Can We Learn From Internal Observers?.- The Image and the Picture of Ecology.- 2. The Perspective of Theoretical Physics.- Endophysics — Descartes Taken Seriously.- Endo- and Exo-Theories of Matter.- Temporal Bell Inequalities: A Journey to the Limits of “Consistent Histories”.- Entropy and Evolution.- General Remarks on Complexity.- Observing Complexity and the Complexity of Observation.- Extrinsic-Intrinsic Concept and Complementarity.- 3. The Perspective of Cognitive Science.- Time — A Hidden Window to Dynamics.- Sensory Perceptions and the Endo-Exo Interface: Towards a Physics of Cognitive Processes.- Circular Causality and the Human Self-Organized Endo-Exo Interface.- Epistemological Considerations of Neural Representations of Languages.- Semantic Pressure, Hyper-Systems, and Feelings.- Wigner’s Friend Revitalized?.- The Mental System — A Mathematical/Physical Approach.