Related papers: The fourth Dimension
Theories of decoherence come in two flavors---Platonic and Aristotelian. Platonists grant ontological primacy to the concepts and mathematical symbols by which we describe or comprehend the physical world. Aristotelians grant it to the…
Quantum theory is extremely successful in explaining most physical phenomena, and is not contradicted by any experiment. Yet, the theory has many puzzling features : the occurrence of probabilities, the unclear distinction between the…
Philosophy of science attempts to describe all parts of the scientific process in a general way in order to facilitate the description, execution and improvements of this process. So far, all proposed philosophies have only covered existing…
The logic--linguistic structure of quantum physics is analysed. The role of formal systems and interpretations in the representation of nature is investigated. The problems of decidability, completeness, and consistency can affect quantum…
We present a computable algorithm that assigns probabilities to every logical statement in a given formal language, and refines those probabilities over time. For instance, if the language is Peano arithmetic, it assigns probabilities to…
Difficulties and discomfort with the interpretation of quantum mechanics are due to differences in language between it and classical physics. Analogies to The Special Theory of Relativity, which also required changes in the basic worldview…
Doubts are raised concerning the usual interpretation of the alleged failure, by quantum mechanics, of the distributive law of classical logic. The difficulty raised by incompatible sets of observables is overcome within an epistemic…
It has for ages been a rather constant feature of thinking in science to take it for granted that the respective thinking happens in realms which are totally outside and independent of all the other phenomena that constitute the objects of…
Prigogine and Stengers (1988) have pointed to the centrality of the concepts of "time and eternity" for the cosmology contained in Newtonian physics, but they have not addressed this issue beyond the domain of physics. The construction of…
The philosopher Plato is remembered even today by scientists, and his writings are still inspiring the scientific research. In the present short note (intended essentially for public outreach) two examples are briefly illustrated: 1) the…
What do we do when cosmology raises questions it cannot answer? These include the existence of a multiverse and the universality of the laws of physics. We cannot settle any of these issues by experiment, and this is where philosophers…
A holistic view of the cosmological appearance and development of space is obtained by studying space as a spherically closed surface of a 4-sphere in a zero energy balance between motion and gravitation. Such an approach re-establishes…
In classical physics, a single measurement can in principle reveal the state of a system. However, quantum theory permits numerous non-equivalent measurements on a physical system, each providing only limited information about the state.…
A physical theory of the world is presented under the unifying principle that all of nature is laid out before us and experienced through the passage of time. The one-dimensional progression in time is opened out into a multi-dimensional…
I'll discuss how Goedel's paradox "This statement is false/unprovable" yields his famous result on the limits of axiomatic reasoning. I'll contrast that with my work, which is based on the paradox of "The first uninteresting positive whole…
We explore a cyclic universe due to phantom and quintessence fields. We find that, in every cycle of the evolution of the universe, the phantom dominates the cosmic early history and quintessence dominates the cosmic far future. In this…
It has been shown at other occasions that recent results of modern physics can be used to shed some more light onto the foundations of the world, provided the actual task of philosophy is being re-interpreted in terms of a theory which is…
The example of the calculus is used to explain how simple, practical math was made enormously complex by imposing on it the Western religiously-colored notion of mathematics as "perfect". We describe a pedagogical experiment to make math…
Various relations between conformal quantum field theories in one, two and four dimensions are explored. The intention is to obtain a better understanding of 4D CFT with the help of methods from lower dimensional CFT.
Regular physics is unsatisfactory in that it fails to take into consideration phenomena relating to mind and meaning, whereas on the other side of the cultural divide such constructs have been studied in detail. This paper discusses a…