Ausgehend von der Idee des Glasperlenspiels, die Hermann Hesse in seinem gleichnamigen Roman entwirft, haben die Autoren in diesem Band die Moglichkeiten und Grenzen eines solchen Spiels im Umgang mit Wissen ausgelotet. Sie zeigen neue Methoden fur das Wissensmanagement auf und verbinden dafur Erkenntnisse verschiedener Wissenschaftsgebiete wie Logik, System- und Erkenntnistheorie sowie Semiotik, Kognition und Kommunikation. Das begleitende Computerprogramm unterstutzt Leser beim Experimentieren mit Wissen."

The context within which Spinoza once developed his theory has clearly changed. However, most of Spinoza's general approach to conceptualizing the world can still be utilized, albeit with a slight change in terminology. Spinoza's approach has many advantages as compared with the approaches of his contemporaries, such as Descartes and Leibniz. Conceptualization today also requires taking fields such as physics and mathematics explicitly into account. This is very much in the sense of Spinoza's original intention that led him to speak in his main work of an ethics to be proved in geometrical order (which actually means: according to mathematical methods). This book is about a mathematical machinery which, is based on a strict logical structure, as well as on a not so strict hermeneutic structure - and is even representable in terms of algebraic expressions of a considerable symbolic quality. Eventually, this may be capable of shedding a completely new light on the ancient problem of the relationship between human beings and the rest of nature. As the book shows, the theory of evolutionary systems is a prime candidate for a conceptualization that might be useful in order to concretely develop this new insight.

Ernst Blochs fruhes Hauptwerk ist dem schwierigen Verhaltnis von offener materialistischer Philosophie und geschlossenem Systemansatz gewidmet und ringt dabei mit der idealistischen Metaphysik ebenso wie mit der Existenzphilosophie. Der vorliegende Band erschliesst Das Prinzip Hoffnung auf dem neuesten Stand der Debatte und macht seine ungebrochene Aktualitat fur ein breites akademisches Publikum zuganglich."