Welcome to Issue 26 of SHAPE Journal.

Once again, this issue is somewhat different to either the usual arbitrary collection of papers in what is best described as a Standard Issue, or the set of closely related contributions that demands their own dedicated Special Issue. There has also a development of our Standard form into what might be called a Magazine Issue, and yet here we are again with yet another different offering. For the papers included here are of a special type: they are corrections or amplifying updates of previously published papers, and rather than just referring to their antecedents , it is clear that such modifications will always be necessary. So the emphasis in this Issue is put upon this absolutely essential aspect of the real development of ideas, and departs from the usual incrementalist way of most such papers in the usual Professional Journals.

You may wonder what the differences involved may be, but it is in the Philosophy of such “improving” contributions, for they are not so much mere corrections as conceptual developments and hence are unified in the clear emergent aspect involved. In a sense we are hoping that the basic standpoint behind all the contributions to SHAPE, and their developments are emphasized as the necessary way forwards in today’s Science. We, as always, focus upon the actual transitional trjectories, which are involved in such developments. We do not believe in the cumulative, incrementalist repository of individual additive contributions, but the ever deeper revelation of the creative processes that are essential in real understanding. In a sense we do not emphasize the delivery of Forms, as do the deliverers of equations, but the study of the Forms of Form and their Emergences.

Enjoy!

Jim Schofield
JULY 2012