Editorial Introduction

Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men. (Homer, The Iliad, p. 200)

One of the reasons I like the study of astronomy is that it is a silent corrective to our inveterate narcissism; it locates our fleeting place in this stunningly complex and unimaginably expansive cosmos. While astronomy presents us with one hundred million galaxies, quantum physics presents us with a world of infinite possibilities - from the macro to the micro, we are exposed to a level of complexity that transcends human understanding. Edwin Schrödinger, the noted quantum physicist, wrote: “the concept of reality as such, as it objectively exists independent of all human observers, is indefensible, if not downright meaningless. Still the concept of reality is as indispensable in science as it is in everyday life” (Beller, 1999, p. 282). There is no doubt that the questions we ask determine the answers we get; Albert Einstein noted, “It is the theory that decides what we can observe (Gregory, 1988, p. 193).” If we construct our reality, we likewise construct any code of ethics. We do not, however, need the complexity of quantum physics to establish that fact; cross-cultural studies also make such a conclusion obvious.

Do human beings create ethical mandates and guidelines in order not to lose their balance in the cosmos of the psyche and/or the cultures in which they live? As a psychological construct, any ethical system has its roots in earliest childhood, its trunk, so to speak, in a particular culture and its leaves in personal reflection and awareness. There is no immovable solid ground in which the tree of ethics grows; we live, consequently, with a necessary pretense, that is, as if it were so.

Determinism is one attempt, I believe, to find a solid ground; taken absolutely, it denies the possibility of ethics. Human experience suggests a more complex scenario. Although philosophical thought has struggled for centuries with the possibility or not of free will, psychoanalysis has