Related papers: The Relativity of Existence
It goes without saying that we are stuck with the universe we have. Nevertheless, we would like to go beyond simply describing our observed universe, and try to understand why it is that way rather than some other way. Physicists and…
The theory of regularity is a philosophical perspective in which laws of nature are just descriptions, that is to say, laws of nature do not govern the world. Moreover, according to the theory of regularity, the number of laws of nature…
The development of science and technology has progressively demonstrated the ability of humankind to understand and manipulate the physical world, and it has also shown some fundamental limitations to predictability of physical events. This…
The aim of this essay is to propose a conception of mathematics that is fully consonant with naturalism. By that I mean the hypothesis that everything that exists is part of the natural world, which makes up a unitary whole.
If our universe has appeared in a result of Big Bang or something like this, whether we have reasons to deny an existence of other universes appearing by the same or similar way? An objection that there is no anything like it, is doubtful,…
Many have wondered how mathematics, which appears to be the result of both human creativity and human discovery, can possibly exhibit the degree of success and seemingly-universal applicability to quantifying the physical world as…
Eugene Wigner famously argued for the "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics" for describing physics and other natural sciences in his 1960 essay. That essay has now led to some 55 years of (sometimes anguished) soul searching ---…
The Universe contains everything that exists, including life. And all that exists, including life, obeys universal physical laws. Do those laws then give adequate foundations for a complete explanation of biological phenomena? We discuss…
The physical processes that determine the properties of our everyday world, and of the wider cosmos, are determined by some key numbers: the 'constants' of micro-physics and the parameters that describe the expanding universe in which we…
A mathematical model of the natural origin of our universe is presented. The model is based only on well-established physics. No claim is made that this model uniquely represents exactly how the universe came about. But the viability of a…
The "cosmic triangle" is introduced as a way of representing the past, present, and future status of the universe. Our current location within the cosmic triangle is determined by the answers to three questions: How much matter is in the…
I review the basis and limitations of plausible inference in cosmology, in particular the limitation that it can only provide fundamentally true inferences when the hypotheses under consideration form a set that is exhaustive. They never…
In this paper we work out a multiverse scenario whose physical characteristics enable us to advance the following the conjecture that whereas the physics of particles and fields is confined to live in the realm of the whole multiverse…
A fascinating and deep question about nature is what one would see if one could probe space and time at smaller and smaller distances. Already the 19th-century founders of modern geometry contemplated the possibility that a piece of empty…
Why did the big bang occur, why do the laws and constants of nature as well as the boundary conditions seem so fine-tuned for life, what is the role of intelligence and self-consciousness in the universe, and how can it escape cosmic…
Mathematics and its relation to the physical universe have been the topic of speculation since the days of Pythagoras. Several different views of the nature of mathematics have been considered: Realism - mathematics exists and is…
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 some cosmological theories with varying constants there are anthropic reasons why the expansion of the universe must not be too {\it close} to flatness or the cosmological constant too close to zero. Using exact theories which…
Based on the conjecture that rather than the second law of thermodynamics inevitably be breached as matter approaches a big crunch or a black hole singularity, the order of events should reverse, a model of the universe that resolves a…
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…