Contextuality and probability in quantum mechanics and beyond: a preface

This special issue is loosely based on the Purdue Winer Memorial Lectures 2018, an interdisciplinary meeting held at Purdue University in November 2018. I take this opportunity to express my gratitude to the late Benjamin Winer, a prominent psychometrician who worked at Purdue in 1954–1984, for leaving a legacy that funded this and other Winer Memorial Lectures. My gratitude also goes to Ben Winer’s sister Sylvia VerMeer, who generously added to this legacy before her passing away in 2008. Purdue Winer Memorial Lectures have been held with approximate regularity of once every 2 years since my organizing the first such meeting in 2002. Each of these meetings had a broadly defined topic, and in 2018 it was ‘Probability and contextuality’. It would not be fair, however, to relate the present collection of papers to only this one meeting. Most of the contributors to this issue were also participants in the annual workshop that I have been holding since 2017 in Prague, Czech Republic, under the name ‘Quantum contextuality in quantum mechanics and beyond’, financed by Purdue University. I should also mention the prominent role of the Purdue Winer Memorial Lectures 2014, ‘Contextuality from quantum physics to psychology’, based on which World Scientific published a book of chapters under the same name [1]. This was arguably the first interdisciplinary meeting entirely dedicated to contextuality. I would like to thank Víctor H. Cervantes, Ru Zhang, Lacey Perry and Maria Kon, doctoral students at Purdue University, for their invaluable help in organizing and running some of these meetings. This special issue would not be possible without the work and expertise of my fellow coeditors: Samson Abramsky, Adán Cabello and Paweł Kurzyński. They also served as members of the scientific committees of the Purdue Winer Memorial Lectures 2018 and the Prague contextuality workshops. In addition, I should thank my fellow coeditors for critically reading and commenting