Related papers: Physics beyond Causality
Causality is one of the most fundamental -- and yet elusive -- concepts in physics. From its intuitive role in everyday experience to its formal and often implicit role in scientific theories, causality has challenged philosophers and…
More often than not, recently popular structuralist interpretations of physical theories leave the central concept of a structure insufficiently precisified. The incipient causal sets approach to quantum gravity offers a paradigmatic case…
Along with weaving together observations, experiments, and theoretical constructs into a coherent mesh of understanding of the world around us, physics over its past five centuries has continuously refined the base concepts on which the…
The process of cognition is analysed to adjust the set theory to physical description. Postulates and basic definitions are revised. The specific sets of predicates, called presets, corresponding to the physical objects identified by an…
A perplexing problem in understanding physical reality is why the universe seems comprehensible, and correspondingly why there should exist physical systems capable of comprehending it. In this essay I explore the possibility that rather…
Causal set theory offers a simple and elegant picture of discrete physics. But the vast majority of causal sets look nothing at all like continuum spacetimes, and must be excluded in some way to obtain a realistic theory. I describe recent…
Quantum theory is a mathematical formalism to compute probabilities for outcomes happenning in physical experiments. These outcomes constitute events happening in space-time. One of these events represents the fact that a system located in…
Physicists study a wide variety of phenomena creating new interdisciplinary research fields by applying theories and methods originally developed in physics in order to solve problems in economics, social science, biology, medicine,…
Understanding the causal influences that hold among parts of a system is critical both to explaining that system's natural behaviour and to controlling it through targeted interventions. In a quantum world, understanding causal relations is…
Realist interpretations of quantum mechanics presuppose the existence of elements of reality that are independent of the actions used to reveal them. Such a view is challenged by several no-go theorems that show quantum correlations cannot…
We propose the quantum mechanical description of complex systems should be performed using two types of causality relation: the ordering relation ($x\prec y$) and the subset relation ($A\subseteq B$). The structures with two ordering…
Central to the development of any new theory is the investigation of the observable consequences of the theory. In the search for quantum gravity, research in phenomenology has been dominated by models violating Lorentz invariance (LI) --…
In general relativity, the causal structure between events is dynamical, but it is definite and observer-independent; events are point-like and the membership of an event A in the future or past light-cone of an event B is an…
Complex systems are characterized by specific time-dependent interactions among their many constituents. As a consequence they often manifest rich, non-trivial and unexpected behavior. Examples arise both in the physical and non-physical…
The rich body of physical theories defines the foundation of our understanding of the world. Its mathematical formulation is based on classical Aristotelian (binary) logic. In the philosophy of science the ambiguities, paradoxes, and the…
This article explores the constraints of perception and cognition in relativistic physics. Describing reality as a cognitive representation of our sensory inputs, the article shows how the limitations in perception translate to the…
A non-technical argument is presented that there is a link between the mind and the physical world in modern physics. Special relativity, general relativity, quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, and other areas of physics are explored.…
The science of complexity is based on a new way of thinking that stands in sharp contrast to the philosophy underlying Newtonian science, which is based on reductionism, determinism, and objective knowledge. This paper reviews the…
The causal set approach to quantum gravity embodies the concepts of causality and discreteness. This article explores some foundational and conceptual issues within causal set theory.
The evolution of the human mind through natural selection mandates that our conscious experiences are causally potent in order to leave a tangible impact upon the surrounding physical world. Any attempt to construct a functional theory of…