Related papers: Atomism versus Holism in Science and Philosophy
Without wasting time and effort on philosophical justifications and implications, we write down the conditions for the Hamiltonian of a quantum system for rendering it mathematically equivalent to a deterministic system. These are the…
In this article we present a possible way to make usual quantum mechanics fully compatible with physical realism, defined as the statement that the goal of physics is to study entities of the natural world, existing independently from any…
Quantum Darwinism is a paradigm to understand how classically objective reality emerges from within a fundamentally quantum universe. Despite the growing attention that this field of research as been enjoying, it is currently not known what…
Analogue Hamiltonian simulation is a promising near-term application of quantum computing and has recently been put on a theoretical footing. In Hamiltonian simulation, a physical Hamiltonian is engineered to have identical physics to…
We consider Hilbert's problem of the axioms of Physics at a qualitative or conceptual level. This issue is more pressing than ever as we seek to understand how both General Relativity and quantum theory could emerge from some deeper theory…
Ladyman and Ross (LR) argue that quantum objects are not individuals (or are at most weakly discernible individuals) and use this idea to ground their metaphysical view, ontic structural realism, according to which relational structures are…
Traditional cognitive science rests on a foundation of classical logic and probability theory. This foundation has been seriously challenged by several findings in experimental psychology on human decision making. Meanwhile, the formalism…
In non-relativistic as well as in special relativistic quantum theory, {\em mass} and {\em charge} are {\em pure numbers} appearing in various (quantum) operators and admit {\em any values}, {\it ie}, values for these quantities are to be…
The hypothesis that matter is made of some ultimate and indivisible objects, together the restricted relativity principle, establishes a constraint on the kind of variables we are allowed to use for the variational description of elementary…
This book is an attempt to build a consistent relativistic quantum theory of interacting particles. In the first part of the book "Quantum electrodynamics" we follow rather traditional approach to particle physics. Our discussion proceeds…
An ontology of Leibnizian relationalism, consisting in distance relations among sparse matter points and their change only, is well recognized as a serious option in the context of classical mechanics. In this paper, we investigate how this…
A relativistic version of the (consistent or decoherent) histories approach to quantum theory is developed on the basis of earlier work by Hartle, and used to discuss relativistic forms of the paradoxes of spherical wave packet collapse,…
The relationship between modern philosophy and physics is discussed. It is shown that the latter develops some need for a modernized metaphysics which shows up as an ultima philosophia of considerable heuristic value, rather than as the…
Decoherence and einselection have been effective in explaining several features of an emergent classical world from an underlying quantum theory. However, the theory assumes a particular factorization of the global Hilbert space into…
In modern physics only relative quantities are considered to have physical significance. For example, position assigned to a system depends on the choice of coordinates, and only relative distances between different systems have physical…
Intuitively, the more powerful a theory is, the greater the variety and quantity of ideas can be expressed through its formal language. Therefore, when comparing two theories concerning the same subject, it seems only reasonable to compare…
In this paper we argue against the orthodox definition of quantum entanglement which has been explicitly grounded on several "common sense" (metaphysical) presuppositions and presents today serious formal and conceptual drawbacks. This…
Quantum interference phenomena are widely viewed as posing a challenge to the classical worldview. Feynman even went so far as to proclaim that they are the only mystery and the basic peculiarity of quantum mechanics. Many have also argued…
Contrary to classical semantics, the disjunction of two experimental propositions relating to pure states of a quantum system ("quantum propositions" for short) can be true even in the case where neither disjunct is true. This suggests that…
Process Philosophy endeavours to replace the classical ontology of substances by a process ontology centered on notions of changes and transitions. We argue, that the substantial and processual approach are mutually complementary. Here,…