Related papers: Computational and Biological Analogies for Underst…
While fields like Artificial Life have made huge strides in quantifying the mechanisms that distinguish living systems from non-living ones, particular mechanisms remain difficult to reproduce in silico. Known as open-endedness, we've been…
We describe a rigorous construction, using matched asymptotic expansions, which establishes under very general conditions that local terrestrial and solar-system experiments will measure the effects of varying `constants' of Nature…
The (re)introduction of $\Lambda$ into cosmology has spurred debates that touch on central questions in philosophy of science, as well as the foundations of general relativity and particle physics. We provide a systematic assessment of the…
Much of our understanding of ecological and evolutionary mechanisms derives from analysis of low-dimensional models: with few interacting species, or few axes defining "fitness". It is not always clear to what extent the intuition derived…
Selection effects in cosmology are often invoked to "explain" why some of the fundamental constant of Nature, and in particular the cosmological constant, take on the value they do in our Universe. We briefly review this probabilistic…
We briefly review the various contexts within which one might address the issue of ``why'' the dimensionless constants of Nature have the particular values that they are observed to have. Both the general historical trend, in physics, of…
The aim of cosmological simulations is to reproduce the properties of the observed Universe, serving as tools to test structure and galaxy formation models. Constrained simulations of our local cosmological region up to a few hundred Mpc/h…
A comparison of the standard models in particle physics and in cosmology demonstrates that they are not compatible, though both are well established. Basics of modern cosmology are briefly reviewed. It is argued that the measurements of the…
This paper provides the first systematic philosophical analysis of an increasingly important part of modern scientific practice: analogue quantum simulation. We introduce the distinction between `simulation' and `emulation' as applied in…
The paper discusses the problem of demarcation between the dimensions of natural and the human sciences in contemporary cosmology. In spite of a common presumption that cosmology is a natural science, the specificity of its alleged subject…
Nearly all cell models explicitly or implicitly deal with the biophysical constraints that must be respected for life to persist. Despite this, there is almost no systematicity in how these constraints are implemented, and we lack a…
The observational evidence for the recent acceleration of the universe demonstrates that canonical theories of cosmology and particle physics are incomplete---if not incorrect---and that new physics is out there, waiting to be discovered. A…
The problem of understanding fundamental physical constants was discussed in particle physics, astronomy and cosmology. Here, I show that a new insight comes from condensed matter physics and liquid physics in particular: fundamental…
Anthropic models can give testable predictions, which can be confirmed or falsified at a specified confidence level. This is illustrated using the successful prediction of the cosmological constant as an example. The history and the nature…
Pre-trained vision language models still fall short of human visual cognition. In an effort to improve visual cognition and align models with human behavior, we introduce visual stimuli and human judgments on visual cognition tasks,…
Physical AI systems need to perceive, understand, and perform complex actions in the physical world. In this paper, we present the Cosmos-Reason1 models that can understand the physical world and generate appropriate embodied decisions…
The idea of a multiverse -- an ensemble of universes or universe domains -- has received increasing attention in cosmology, both as the outcome of the originating process that generated our own universe, and as an explanation for why our…
In quantum field theory the parameters of the vacuum action are subject to renormalization group running. In particular, the ``cosmological constant'' is not a constant in a quantum field theory context, still less should be zero. In this…
Recently, computational modelling became a very important research tool that enables us to study problems that for decades evaded scientific analysis. Evolutionary systems are certainly examples of such problems: they are composed of many…
Molecular simulations and biophysical experiments can be used to provide independent and complementary insights into the molecular origin of biological processes. A particularly useful strategy is to use molecular simulations as a modelling…