Related papers: A dialectical view of the variational principles o…
This note presents an attempt to provide a conceptual framework for variational formulations of classical physics. Variational principles of physics have all a common source in the {\it principle of virtual work} well known in statics of…
The standard lore in noncommutative physics is the use of first order variational description of a dynamical system to probe the space noncommutativity and its consequences in the dynamics in phase space. As the ultimate goal is to…
A proposal is made for a fundamental theory, in which the history of the universe is constituted of diverse views of itself. Views are attributes of events, and the theory's only be-ables; they comprise information about energy and momentum…
The standard presentation of the principles of quantum mechanics is critically reviewed both from the experimental/operational point and with respect to the request of mathematical consistency and logical economy. A simpler and more…
Quantum mechanics is an extremely successful theory of nature and yet it lacks an intuitive axiomatization. In contrast, the special theory of relativity is well understood and is rooted into natural or experimentally justified postulates.…
This work reflects on mechanics as an epistemological framework on the state of a physical system to regard dynamics as the distribution of mechanical properties over spacetime coordinates. The resulting distribution is taken to be the…
A goal of physics is to understand the greatest possible breadth of natural phenomena in terms of the most economical set of basic concepts. However, as the understanding of physics has developed historically, its pedagogy and language have…
The Hamiltonian defines the dynamical properties of the universe. Evidence from particle physics shows that there is a different version of the Hamiltonian for each direction of time. As there is no physical basis for the universe to be…
Despite its apparent simplicity, Newtonian Mechanics contains conceptual subtleties that may cause some confusion to the deep-thinking student. These subtleties concern fundamental issues such as, e.g., the number of independent laws needed…
This paper deals with the foundations of quantum mechanics. We start by outlining the characterisation, due to Birkhoff and Von Neumann, of the logical structures of the theories of classical physics and quantum mechanics, as boolean and…
A non-local hidden variables theory for non-relativisitic quantum theory is presented, which gives a realist completion of quantum mechanics, in the sense of a complete description of individual events. The proposed fundamental theory is an…
The aim of this work is to study the geometry underlying mechanics and its application to describe autonomous and nonautonomous conservative dynamical systems of different types; as well as dissipative dynamical systems. We use different…
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…
Variational formulations of statics and dynamics of mechanical systems controlled by external forces are presented as examples of variational principles.
I propose a new and direct connection between classical mechanics and quantum mechanics where I derive the quantum mechanical propagator from a variational principle. This variational principle is Hamilton's modified principle generalized…
Authoritative appraisals qualified this book as an axiomatic theory. However, being its essential content no more than an analogy, its theoretical organization cannot be an axiomatic one. In fact, in the first edition Dirac declares to…
This work is devoted to a systematic exposition of the dynamics of a rigid body, considered as a system with kinematic constraints. Having accepted the variational problem in accordance with this, we no longer need any additional postulates…
I contrast two possible attitudes towards a given branch of physics: as inferential (i.e., as concerned with an agent's ability to make predictions given finite information), and as dynamical (i.e., as concerned with the dynamical equations…
It is shown that physical mechanics for pointlike bodies can be effectively modeled in terms of the action of transformation groups that act as symmetries of the solutions of systems of differential equations that describe the integrability…
A methodology for deriving dual variational principles for the classical Newtonian mechanics of mass points in the presence of applied forces, interaction forces, and constraints, all with a general dependence on particle velocities and…