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The unconscious, intuitive and emotional dimension of human choice is the factor that links Gigerenzer et al.’s programme to studies on human creativity. As in the choices we make in everyday life, when we lack both time and information, so too when we solve complex problems in art and science, the creative leap towards originality and innovation often occurs in unconscious, intuitive-type conditions, with a strong affective and emotional component. In the same way that rationality is bounded in everyday choices by these types of factors, creativity is also bounded when resolving artistic and scientific problems by the implicit, intuitive, emotional and perceptual characteristics of the human mind. In the same way that rationality cannot be Olympic, namely it cannot satisfy the canonical requirements of logic and probability calculus, so creativity too cannot be divine. Although this was something ardently desired by the nineteenth-century Romantics, creativity cannot be set apart from earth’s gravity and human bounds. These constraints and the limits of human thought have been analysed in the past above all from a psychological point of view. Instead, in more recent years there has been a strong awareness of the need to combine psychological tests with neurocognitive research. As is clear from the results of the new neuroeconomics and neuroaesthetics programmes, we need above all to study the cerebral dimension if we wish to understand the characteristics of bounded rationality and bounded creativity. Indeed it is the biological structure of the brain, as it has developed through adaptive evolution, that sets the computational bounding parameters for the style of human thought.

A language $L$ has a property tester if there exists a probabilistic algorithm that given an input $x$ queries only a small number of bits of $x$ and distinguishes the cases as to whether $x$ is in $L$ and $x$ has large Hamming distance from all $y$ in $L$. We define a similar notion of quantum property testing and show that there exist languages with good quantum property testers but no good classical testers. We also show there exist languages which require a large number of queries even for quantumly testing.

The substance of this paper opened the symposium on ‘Structure and functioning of apical meristems’ at the X International Botanical Congress, Edinburgh, 1964. It is a review, but includes original work on Macrozamia communis. The works of Hanstein (the so-called ‘Histogen Theory’ of 1868), Duliot (1890) and Schmidt (the ‘Tunica-Corpus Theory’ of 1924) are compared and shown to be descriptively similar. Their term ‘initia’ l, in regard to any one layer or to the central region of the apex or to the whole apex (gymnosperms), corresponds to the ‘apical cel’ l in regard to the whole apex of pteridophytes. The continuing meristematic residue (i.e., the apical cell or cells) is proposed for a line (or lines) of cells inheriting the office of initial. Derived from this, the general meristem is the site of elaboration of primary tissues. In both components of the apical meristem no cell is permanent. Three basic types of continuing meristematic residue (i.e., monoplex, simplex and duplex apices) may have phylogenetic-taxonomic significance. Seed plants are interpreted as having ‘apical cells’, not pyramidal, not necessarily single, and not always superficial. Histological differences between ‘reproductive’ and ‘vegetative’ shoot apices are paralleled by differences between vegetative apices during different growth performances, and may be merely growth differences preceding or accompanying reproduction. Macrozamia communis supplies an original example. Root apices may be grouped in at least five types according to tissue derivation, with no major taxonomic significance, and distributable among the three basic types of continuing meristematic residue. A ‘quiescent centre’ (not completely inactive) is regarded as inevitable and not diminishing the significance of initial (apical) cells. The significance of primary augmentive meristem is discussed, and the primary thickening meristem is exemplified by original observations on Macrozamia communis. The following principles are