Related papers: Some new reflections on Mr. Palomar
The Milanese period in Albert Einstein's life is a key one for the understanding of the development of his scientific questioning. While being a student in Z\"urich from 1896, Einstein returned regularly to Milan to meet his family for the…
In this essay a critical review of present conceptual problems in current cosmology is provided from a more philosophical point of view. In essence, a digression on how could philosophy help cosmologists in what is strictly their…
In this work we study, on a sample of 2.3 million individuals, how Facebook users consumed different information at the edge of political discussion and news during the last Italian electoral competition. Pages are categorized, according to…
From the late 1920s to the early 1950s, cosmic rays were the main instrument to investigate what we now call "high-energy physics". In approximately 25 years, an intense experimental and theoretical work brought particle physics from its…
This is a popular science article to appear on the "Il Nuovo Saggiatore" magazine of the Italian Physical Society. It aims at introducing a broad audience of physicists to the most recent trends in many-body physics of degenerate quantum…
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 physicists working in several areas of research know quite well the name of Ettore Majorana, since it is currently associated to fundamental concepts like {\it Majorana neutrinos} in particle physics and cosmology or {\it Majorana…
I present the reconstruction of the involvement of Karl Popper in the community of physicists concerned with foundations of quantum mechanics, in the 1980s. At that time Popper gave active contribution to the research in physics, of which…
Cosmology, as a science, started at the beginning of the last century with the advent of the Einstein cosmological equations. Based on these equations, the present main stream cosmological model is the well known big-bang, this name…
This contribution to the book in honour of J.S. Bell will probably differ from the remaining ones, in particular since only a part of it will be devoted to specific technical arguments. In fact I have considered appropriate to share with…
Brian Rotman argues that (one) "mind" and (one) "god" are only conceivable, literally, because of (alphabetic) literacy, which allowed us to designate each of these ghosts as an incorporeal, speaker-independent "I" (or, in the case of…
In his essay "Nature Conformable to Herself" the late Murray Gell-Mann expands on an observation of Newton that theories of seemingly disparate phenomena in the universe often make use of similar ideas and similar mathematical structure.…
The aim of this article has been to put together various aspects of the personality of the Italian mathematician Francesco Severi: the mathematical, the political, the institutional, academic and philosophical one. We tried in particular to…
The Universe is the grandest conceivable scale on which the human mind can strive to understand nature. The amazing aspect of cosmology, the branch of science that attempts to understand the origin and evolution of the Universe, is that it…
Based on Plato's Timaeus, we present some reflections on music, cosmology and mathematics and their mutual influence.The article is dedicated to the composer Walter Zimmermann. The final version of this article will appear in the volume…
Wolfgang Pauli's philosophy and physics were intertwined. His philosophy was a variety of Platonism, in which Pauli's affiliation with Carl Jung formed an integral part, but Pauli's philosophical explorations in physics appeared before he…
This book is a philosopher's introduction to the idea that our universe is just one of many universes. I present and assess three versions of the idea: one version from philosophy, and two from physics. In short, they are: all the logically…
Johann Kepler (1571-1630) is sometimes considered as a precursor of science-fiction novels with the writing of "Somnium, sive opus posthumum of astronomia lunaris". In this work published posthumously in 1634 by his son Ludwig, Kepler…
Enormous questions still loom for the emerging science of spontaneous thought: what, exactly, is spontaneous thought? Why does our brain engage in spontaneous forms of thinking, and when is this most likely to occur? And perhaps the…
The author reflects on the significance of Einstein's brain and the search for what makes it distinct.