Related papers: Is Science Nearing Its Limits ? Summarizing Dialog…
The debate between scientific realism and anti-realism remains at a stalemate, making reconciliation seem hopeless. Yet, important work remains: exploring a common ground, even if only to uncover deeper points of disagreement and, ideally,…
These lectures deal with the problem of inductive inference, that is, the problem of reasoning under conditions of incomplete information. Is there a general method for handling uncertainty? Or, at least, are there rules that could in…
The explicit relationship among perception, communication, and design is being discussed in some detail, in order to relate it to characteristic details of the modeling of the world which defines the scientific and artistic activities of…
Astrobiology is a scientific discipline that studies life in the Universe. We call it a discipline and not a science because some authors have cast doubts over its epistemological status by calling it 'a science without an object of study'.…
If the results of the first LHC run are not betraying us, many decades of particle physics are culminating in a complete and consistent theory for all non-gravitational physics: the Standard Model. But despite this monumental achievement…
We discuss whether science is in the process of being transformed from a quest for causality to a quest for correlation in light of the recent development in artificial intelligence. We observe that while a blind trust in the most seductive…
Being one of the most fascinating and ancient sciences, astronomy has always played a special role in society. In 2022 ESO organised an online conference to offer the community a platform to discuss astronomical topics of sociological and…
Cosmology has come a long way from being based on a small number of observations to being a data-driven precision science. We discuss the questions "What is observable?", "What in the Universe is knowable?" and "What are the fundamental…
In the quest to align deep learning with the sciences to address calls for rigor, safety, and interpretability in machine learning systems, this contribution identifies key missing pieces: the stages of hypothesis formulation and testing,…
In physics the value of a theory is measured by its agreement with experimental data. But how should the physics community gauge the value of an emerging theory that has not been tested experimentally as of yet? With no reality check, a…
String theory has been the dominating research field in theoretical physics during the last decades. Despite the considerable time elapse, no new testable predictions have been derived by string theorists and it is understandable that…
One overarching objective of science is to further our understanding of the universe, from its early stages to its current state and future evolution. This depends on gaining insight on the universe's most macroscopic components, for…
In their position paper entitled "Towards a new, complexity science of learning and education", Jorg et al. (2007) argue that educational research is in crisis. In their opinion, the transdisciplinary and interdiscursive approach of…
Ockham's razor is a heuristic concept applied in philosophy of science to decide between two or more feasible physical theories. Ockham's razor operates by deciding in favour of the theory with least assumptions and concepts; roughly…
Innovation and obsolescence describe the dynamics of ever-churning social and biological systems, from the development of economic markets to scientific and technological progress to biological evolution. They have been widely discussed,…
Innovation and obsolescence describe dynamics of ever-churning and adapting social and biological systems, concepts that encompass field-specific formulations. We formalize the connection with a reduced model of the dynamics of the "space…
A significant amount of high-impact contemporary scientific research occurs where biology, computer science, engineering and chemistry converge. Although programmes have been put in place to support such work, the complex dynamics of…
Empirical science needs to be based on facts and claims that can be reproduced. This calls for replicating the studies that proclaim the claims, but practice in most fields still fails to implement this idea. When such studies emerged in…
The claim that life is an emergent phenomenon exhibiting novel properties and principles is often criticized for being in conflict with causal closure at the microscopic level. I argue that advances in cosmological theory suggesting an…
The sciences of complexity present some recurrent themes: the emergence of qualitatively new behaviors in dissipative systems out of equilibrium, the aparent tendency of complex system to lie at the border of phase transitions and…