This may be the most important foreword I ever write, and this may be the most important collection of articles ever published. Let me step back for a moment and explain. I have over fifty years experience as a scientist, researcher, doctor, educator, author and diplomat. It is important the reader understand my professional credentials and experience in order to appreciate the relevance of what I say:

I have been a professor of Internal Medicine and the director of a medical school. I was also the dean of one of the largest universities in Latin America (during my tenure, six new schools, sixteen new majors and twenty-two graduate degrees were created). I was also Secretary of Education and Culture for the State of Nuevo Leon, and Undersecretary of Higher Education and Scientific Research of Mexico, coordinating university and graduate education, as well as scientific research, teacher education, and the Department of General Professions. I served as Ambassador and Permanent Representative for Mexico to UNESCO and was the President of the Science and Technology Commission for the House of Representatives of the Mexican Congress. Additionally, I am a member of the New York Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and the W.F. Kellogg Foundation. I have authored and published numerous books, university textbooks, scientific treatises and other writings.

Some deem me exceptionally qualified to speak on the subjects of science, education and world culture. Please consider the following:

All of us, as humans, are members of the same team. We are faced with an unprecedented turning point in our civilization; our technology has advanced beyond our behavior. If we develop our ethics, we can harness all the discoveries and innovations of our history to form an ecological future. If we fail in this endeavor, we will, in the least, disfigure our planet and society with our technological malfeasance.

Our problem is twofold: first, we need to utilize the precision of mathematics to understand the biology and psychology of human behavior. Once understood, the resulting knowledge needs to be tempered with philosophy, specifically ethics, to create a new systems-oriented, ecological body of behavioral knowledge. Second, the resulting discipline needs to be experienced through a new type of education. Why? Because traditional educational systems deliver subject matter in an authoritative way, creating myopic views of the specific content and how this content relates to the rest of human knowledge. Most importantly, in today's world, traditional educational systems do not adequately allow participants to experience the consequences of knowledge. This is most evident in the sciences where many top experts have never even taken a course in ethics!

Keith Raniere has addressed both of these needs with his discovery of Rational Inquiry™. This method of ethical analysis, representing a true toolset for the system of human thought, is a discovery of historical proportions. The discovery of writing allowed humans to accumulate and communicate knowledge in a way that separated them from all other livings things on this Earth. Writing was the beginning of civilization. Descartes sought to formalize metaphysical understanding through the eyes of a mathematician, planting the seeds of philosophical thought leading to human self-study. Freud furthered this vision, attempting to take the science of the physiology laboratory, and apply it to human behavior. Ultimately, Keith Raniere has taken the results of all human knowledge before him and distilled the next step in human psychological, systems-scientific, philosophical and ethical advancement.

This book is a collection of articles written for the academic and business community through the scientific periodical of which I am director, Conocimiento. More interesting than the articles themselves is the thought, or should I say, "process of thought" behind them. Although they are only a small glimpse into the body of knowledge known as Rational Inquiry™, each article-from the most abstract to the more mundane-poses questions and methods of questioning critical to civilization as a whole. As Keith Raniere so aptly states, "Some people will see a creative article about apples as an interesting way to learn about apples. Others will see it as a deeper statement about nutrition. But the rare systems thinker will see the 'process of thought' within the article, recognizing its significance to the ethical process of how knowledge and technology are handled relative to the future of world ecology. After all, we can learn a lot about ourselves and our civilization by examining how we handle an apple." Enjoy the articles, but most importantly, learn from the thought process behind them. Our world may well depend on it.

Luis Eugenio Todd, MD Monterrey, Mexico August 12, 2007