Related papers: Albert Einstein - a Pious Atheist
Einstein at the Z\"urich Polytechnic: he skipped classes, did not attend all the lectures of his Professors, and before going to the examinations he studied instead from the notebooks of his good friend from class, Marcel Grossmann.…
In this letter we will revise the steps followed by A. Einstein when he first wrote on cosmology from the point of view of the general theory of relativity. We will argue that his insightful line of thought leading to the introduction of…
While philosophy of science is the study of problems of knowledge concerning science in general, there also exists - or should exist - a '' philosophy in science'' directed at finding out in what ways our actual scientific knowledge may…
There are two broad opposing classes of attitudes to reality (realist vs idealist, material vs mental) with corresponding attitudes to knowledge (objective vs subjective, scientific vs romantic). I argue that these attitudes can be…
The traditional concept of knowledge is a justified true belief. The bulk of contemporary epistemology has focused primarily on that task of justification. Truth seems to be a quite obvious criterion-does the belief in question correspond…
Does the quantum state represent reality or our knowledge of reality? In making this distinction precise, we are led to a novel classification of hidden variable models of quantum theory. Indeed, representatives of each class can be found…
We review the physics at the end of the nineteenth century and summarize the process of the establishment of Special Relativity by Albert Einstein in brief. Following in the giant's footsteps, we outline the scientific method which helps to…
Albert Einstein postulated the equivalence of energy and mass, developed the theory of special relativity, explained the photoelectric effect, and described Brownian motion in five papers, all published in 1905, 100 years ago. With these…
Modern science developed within a culture of Judeo-Christian theism, and science and theism have generally supported each other. However, there are certainly areas in both science and religion that puzzle me. Here I outline some puzzles…
We analyze some of Einstein's failures to accomplish tasks which he posed to himself, notably deterministic interpretation of Quantum mechanics and formulation of the Unified theory of physical interactions, putting them into broader…
Aristotle was the first to declare himself in the class of natural philosophers ({\em physiologoi}) and he was the first physicist because he spelled out the first definitions of some basic physical concepts. Moreover, he was the first…
In this article we pay tribute to Herbert Dingle for his early call to re-assess special relativity from philosophical and logical perspectives. However, we disagree with Dingle about a number of issues particularly his failure to…
This paper discusses how theories can be assessed within the epistemological viewpoint advanced by the Austrian physicist Ludwig E. Boltzmann. It builds upon, and further develops, the perspective of Boltzmann's thinking as advanced by…
Einstein was deeply puzzled by the success of natural science, and thought that we would never be able to explain it. He came to this conclusion on the ground that we cannot extract the basic laws of physics from experience using induction…
Experiments may not reveal their full import at the time that they are performed. The scientists who perform them usually are testing a specific hypothesis and quite often have specific expectations limiting the possible inferences that can…
Even if Einstein brought major contributions as a founder of quantum mechanics, he remained deeply unsatisfied with the bases of this structure he knew to be so efficient for physics. His critics are often known through his numerous…
Recently Gerard 't Hooft proposed a structure for a universe overwhelmed with a control by a Theory of Everything (arXiv:1709.02874). He concludes, among many other things, that such a universe could be fully deterministic and that,…
Aristotelian assertoric syllogistic, which is currently of growing interest, has attracted the attention of the founders of modern logic, who approached it in several (semantical and syntactical) ways. Further approaches were introduced…
This work presents a brief and non-technical description of the main results and concepts of the modern scientific cosmology, viewing it from an epistemological perspective which allows a dialog with other modes of thinking like e.g.…
The philosopher Plato is remembered even today by scientists, and his writings are still inspiring the scientific research. In the present short note (intended essentially for public outreach) two examples are briefly illustrated: 1) the…