Our views of the physical world are changing rapidly. Humanity's continuing search for coherent structures in physics, biology, and cosmology has frequently led to surprises as well as confusion. Discovering new phenomena is one thing, putting them into context with other pieces of knowledge, and inferring their fundamental consequences is quite something else. There are controversies, differences of opinion, and sometimes even religious feelings which come into play. These should be discussed openly. Philosophical issues that are of a general, nontechnical nature should be handled in the opinion pages of the news media, but when the discussed arguments become too technical for that, when peer review is needed to select the really valuable pieces of insight, only a distinguished scientific journal is the appropriate form.

The journal Foundations of Physics has been led by the able hands of Prof. Alwyn van der Merwe for a very long time. Now, we are continuing under my editorship. The scope of the journal remains much the same: the conceptual bases and fundamental theories of modern physics and cosmology, emphasizing the logical, methodological, and philosophical premises of modern physical theories and procedures. As before, we welcome papers on the interpretation of quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, special and general relativity. We think it is also time for the experts on string theory, M-theory, and brane cosmology to ponder the foundations of these approaches, and ask them to submit papers. Cosmology is an important subject where controversial ideas abound, and such discussions are welcome.

During my first couple of months in this office, it became clear that fundamental questions in physics and philosophy also attract the interest of many laymen physicists.
We receive numerous submissions from people who venture to attack the most basic premises of theories such as Special Relativity, but instead only succeed in displaying a lack of professional insight in how a physical theory is constructed. I suspect that some of these people may have been working somewhere in an attic, deprived from daylight for decades, determined only to reemerge with a Theory of Everything in their hands. Even though they may be very sincere, we have to disappoint such authors. New insights are gained only by intense interactions with professionals all over the globe, and by solidly familiarizing oneself with their findings, and we must make a selection from only those papers whose authors have a solid understanding of the topics they are discussing.
Fortunately they also submit their work, and their clever inventiveness continues to surprise us.
The foundations of our science are indeed very much worthwhile to be intensely studied. I am sure that progress of science strongly depends on the deep and daring insights that may be gained by taking a fresh look at the most basic facts that underly our present knowledge.

I hope to receive your submissions. Acceptation of a paper may not necessarily mean that all referees agree with everything, but rather that the issues put forward by the author were considered to be of sufficient interest to our readership, and the exposition was clear enough that our readers, whom we assume to be competent enough, can judge for themselves.

The former letters publication Foundations of Physics Letters now merges with Foundations of Physics. Short papers that demand a rapid publication process will be included in the special section "Letters to the Editor" (and will be available as open access papers, without open access fee). Authors who wish to raise discussion points or other articles of a different format are welcome to submit these as well, if they care to explain their wishes with the submission.