History and Philosophy of Physics
The indigenous astronomy in Africa and of Africans exhibits many of the same patterns as indigenous astronomy found in other parts of the world such as with agricultural calendars established by observing celestial bodies as well as other…
Astrobiology or exobiology is a relatively new area of science that investigates the possibilities of finding life in other places in the universe. This not only includes the exploration of planets near or distant to Earth, but also the…
There is a long tradition of thinking of thermodynamics, not as a theory of fundamental physics (or even a candidate theory of fundamental physics), but as a theory of how manipulations of a physical system may be used to obtain desired…
The causal closure of physics is usually discussed in a context free way. Here I discuss it in the context of engineering systems and biology, where strong emergence takes place due to a combination of upwards emergence and downwards…
There has been much controversy over weak and strong emergence in physics and biology. As pointed out by Phil Anderson in many papers, the existence of broken symmetries is the key to emergence of properties in much of solid state physics.…
We consider the proposal by many scholars and by the International Astronomical Union to rename Hubble's law as the Hubble-Lemaitre law. We find the renaming questionable on historic, scientific and philosophical grounds. From a historical…
Einstein became world-famous on 7 November 1919, following press publication of a meeting held in London on 6 November 1919 where the results were announced of two British expeditions led by Eddington, Dyson and Davidson to measure how much…
Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) is considered the most accurate theory in the history of science. However, this precision is limited to a single experimental value: the anomalous magnetic moment of the electron (g-factor). The calculation of…
In 1934 Enrico Fermi accepted an invitation to deliver lectures in Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay. He arrived in Buenos Aires on July 30, lectured in Buenos Aires, Cordoba, La Plata and Montevideo, and then moved on August 18 to Sao Paulo…
In June 1888, Oliver Heaviside received by mail an officially unpublished pamphlet, which was written and printed by the American author Willard J. Gibbs around 1881-1884. This original document is preserved in the Dibner Library of the…
Karl Popper published, in 1968, a paper that allegedly found a flaw in a very influential article of Birkhoff and von Neumann, which pioneered the field of "quantum logic". Nevertheless, nobody rebutted Popper's criticism in print for…
It is not very well known that the philosopher Karl Popper has been one of the foremost critics of the orthodox interpretation of quantum physics for about six decades. This paper reconstructs in detail most of Popper's activities on…
In this paper I show that, while Einstein and Bohm both pursued a deterministic description of quantum mechanics, their philosophical concern was in fact primarily realism and not determinism. Their alleged firm adherence to determinism is…
In this paper, we reject commonly accepted views on fundamentality in science, either based on bottom-up construction or top-down reduction to isolate the alleged fundamental entities. We do not introduce any new scientific methodology, but…
Physicist Isabelle Stone forged ahead in what was largely a men's profession in the early 1900s. She is credited as the first woman in the United States to obtain a Ph.D. in physics, one of the two women founders of the American Physical…
This memoir honors the late Berni Julian Alder, who inspired both of us with his pioneering development of molecular dynamics. Berni's work with Tom Wainwright, described in the 1959 Scientific American[1], brought Bill to interview at…
The essay is devoted to the personality of the prominent theorist D.V. Volkov and his pioneer works in quantum field theory and elementary particle physics.
The problem of the observer in quantum mechanics is getting new human content. The paradox of Wigner's friend and its extended versions have observers who not only observe quantum phenomena, but communicate, have memories and even…
This paper is a faithful description of the author's career as a scientist, which often intersected that of Yves Couder. The emphasis of this paper is a true description of how the science that the author has been associated with really…
Temperature scale and the Boltzmann constant: The newest system of units is based on a compatible set of natural constants with fixed values. An example is the Boltzmann constant k which defines the thermal energy content kT. To express the…