Related papers: Atomism versus Holism in Science and Philosophy
Quantum theory is applicable, in principle, to both the microscopic and macroscopic realms. It is therefore worthwhile to investigate whether it is possible to evolve a quantum-compatible view of the properties and states of macroscopic…
A review is given on the foundations and applications of non-Hermitian classical and quantum physics. First, key theorems and central concepts in non-Hermitian linear algebra, including Jordan normal form, biorthogonality, exceptional…
The indeterministic character of physical laws is generally considered to be the most important consequence of quantum physics. A deterministic point of view, however, together with the possibility of well defined Hamiltonian trajectories,…
We survey some of the main conceptual developments in the study of PT-symmetric and pseudo-Hermitian Hamiltonian operators that have taken place during the past ten years or so. We offer a precise mathematical description of a quantum…
In physics, there is the prevailing intuition that we are part of a unique external world, and that the goal of physics is to understand and describe this world. This assumption of the fundamentality of objective reality is often seen as a…
We show that the modern quantum mechanics, and particularly the theory of decoherence, allows formulating a sort of a physical metatheory of consciousness. Particularly, the analysis of the necessary conditions for the occurrence of…
According to the so-called ``Quantum Darwinist'' approach, the emergence of ``classical islands'' from a quantum background is assumed to obey a (selection) principle of maximal information. We illustrate this idea by considering the…
Principle of ``Superrelativity'' has been proposed in order to avoid the contradiction between principle of relativity and foundations of quantum theory. Solutions of a newly derived non-linear Klein-Gordon equation presumably may be…
The view of nature we adopt in the natural attitude is determined by common sense, without which we could not survive. Classical physics is modelled on this common-sense view of nature, and uses mathematics to formalise our natural…
The research in quantum gravity has jauntily grown in the recent years, intersecting with conceptual and philosophical issues that have a long history. In this paper I analyze the conceptual basis on which Loop Quantum Gravity has grown,…
One of the basic observations of the classical world is that physical entities are real and can be distinguished from each other. However, within quantum theory, the idea of physical realism is not well established. A framework to analyse…
The analysis of the Helmholtz equation is shown to lead to an exact Hamiltonian system of equations describing in terms of ray trajectories a very wide family of wave-like phenomena (including diffraction and interference) going much beyond…
We present a new characterization of quantum theory in terms of simple physical principles that is different from previous ones in two important respects: first, it only refers to properties of single systems without any assumptions on the…
A slight modification of one axiom of quantum theory changes a reversible theory into a time asymmetric theory. Whereas the standard Hilbert space axiom does not distinguish mathematically between the space of states (in-states of…
I aim to clarify the physical content and significance of naturalness. Physicists' earliest understanding of naturalness, as an autonomy of scales (AoS) requirement provides the most cogent definition of naturalness and I will assert that…
The interaction between two parts in a compound quantum system may be reconsidered more completely than before and some new understandings and conclusions different from current quantum mechanics are obtained, including the conservation law…
Recent philosophical discussions about metaphysical indeterminacy have been substantiated with the idea that quantum mechanics, one of the most successful physical theories in the history of science, provides explicit instances of worldly…
The human mind is constituted by inner, subjective, private, first-person conscious experiences that cannot be measured with physical devices or observed from an external, objective, public, third-person perspective. The qualitative,…
Starting from the guiding principles of spacetime locality and operationalism, a general framework for a probabilistic description of nature is proposed. Crucially, no notion of time or metric is assumed, neither any specific physical…
The hyperplane and proper time formalisms are discussed mainly for the spin-half particles in the quantum case. A connection between these covariant Hamiltonian formalisms is established. It is showed that choosing the space-like…