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Physics emerged in the seventeenth century under the name "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy", as the cutting edge of the reductionist effort to understand Nature in terms of simple fundamental laws.

Natural phenomena which could not (yet) be reduced to the fundamental laws were defined as belonging to other sciences and research fields: chemistry, biology, psychology, sociology, philosophy, etc.

This definition is lately challenged by 2 parallel developments:

• the reductionist belief that understanding the ultimate microscopic laws is sufficient (or necessary) in order to understand their complex macroscopic consequences has become untenable even within the boundaries of Physics
• the phenomena originating in the other fields, became tractable by "hard" techniques which use quantitative modeling to get precise quantitative predictions from simple fundamental laws. Such research projects require the use of technical background, mathematical language, theoretical paradigms, conceptual structures, relevance criteria, research attitudes, scientific ethos and academic education specific until now only to Physics.

Consequently, Physics has the chance to become in the 2000's the leading edge in most of the efforts to solve the newly emerging scientific problems.

If the physicists of the 2000's will display the same courage, creativity, passion, and imagination as the generation of Plank, Einstein and Bohr, in reshaping their field, then the beginning of the 21 century is guaranteed to be as successful for Physics as the beginning of the 20-th. The present meeting is a small step to prepare the grounds for it.

Next: Complex BIOLOGY
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