Related papers: The Grand View of Physics
In this lecture I build up the motivation for relativity and gravitation based on general principles and common sense considerations which should fall in the sphere of appreciation of a general reader. There is a novel way of looking at…
Rather than offering chronologically ordered encyclopedic knowledge of a lifetime, only some of the most striking events of the existence of this well-known scientist are here pointed out. Sections: Life; Man of laws; Interest in…
I outline Bell's vision of the "great enterprise" of science, and his view that conventional teachings about quantum mechanics constituted a betrayal of this enterprise. I describe a proposal of his to put the theory on a more satisfactory…
The paper discusses the fundamental characteristics distinguishing the natural and social systems from each other. It considers in detail the basic approaches, prospects, and possibilities of constructing mathematical description for social…
This talk reviews some mathematical and physical ideas related to the notion of dimension. After a brief historical introduction, various modern constructions from fractal geometry, noncommutative geometry, and theoretical physics are…
This paper takes James David Forbes' Encyclopaedia Britannica entry, Dissertation Sixth, as a lens to examine physics as a cognitive, practical, and social, enterprise. Forbes wrote this survey of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century…
Our understanding of the four basic concepts of Physics -- space, time, matter and force -- has undergone radical change in the course of work on unification, starting with Maxwell's unification of electricity with magnetism, all the way to…
Some basic sociophysical notions are described by a physicist, tentatively for a sociologically-oriented reader.
The concept of infinity took centuries to achieve recognized status in the field of mathematics, despite the fact that it was implicitly present in nearly all mathematical endeavors. Here I explore the idea that a similar development might…
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…
It is a widespread belief that results like G\"odel's incompleteness theorems or the intrinsic randomness of quantum mechanics represent fundamental limitations to humanity's strive for scientific knowledge. As the argument goes, there are…
The view of nature we adopt in the natural attitude is determined by common sense, without which we could not survive. Classical physics is modelled on this common-sense view of nature, and uses mathematics to formalise our natural…
Maxwell's mature presentation of his equations emphasized the unity of electromagnetism and mechanics, subsuming both as "dynamical systems". That intuition of unity has proved both fruitful, as a source of pregnant concepts, and broadly…
Our knowledge about the universe has increased tremendously in the last three decades or so --- thanks to the progress in observations --- but our understanding has improved very little. There are several fundamental questions about our…
Mathematics and its relation to the physical universe have been the topic of speculation since the days of Pythagoras. Several different views of the nature of mathematics have been considered: Realism - mathematics exists and is…
The analytic hyperbolic geometric viewpoint of Einstein's special theory of relativity is presented.
One of the main activities in science teaching, and in particular in Physics teaching, is not only the discussion of both modern problems and problems which solution is an urgent matter. It means that the picture of an active and alive…
Salam's biographies claim that he was opposed to Pakistan's nuclear weapon programme. This is somewhat strange given that he was the senior Science Advisor to the Pakistan government for at least some of the period between 1972 when the…
Throughout John Wheeler's career, he wrestled with big issues like the fundamental length, the black hole and the unification of quantum mechanics and relativity. In this essay, I argue that solid state physics -- historically the study of…
We discuss how developments in physics often imply in the need that spacetime acquires an increasingly richer and complex structure. General Relativity was the first theory to show us the way to connect space and time with the physical…