Related papers: Albert Einstein and Scientific Theology
In the distant past, astronomy was often intertwined with religion into a unified cosmos. As science became a distinct cultural enterprise, astronomy has witnessed a variety of rich interactions with other fields. Mathematical statistics…
The traditional concept of knowledge is a justified true belief. The bulk of contemporary epistemology has focused primarily on that task of justification. Truth seems to be a quite obvious criterion-does the belief in question correspond…
It is a quite common view among people, that are not aware of the developments in modern physics, that it is part of human nature to substitute religious faith in places where there is no knowledge. Therefore, an increase in knowledge would…
There has been a growing realisation that school science curricula do not adequately reflect the revolutionary changes in our scientific understanding of the 20th century. This discrepancy between current school education and our modern…
We briefly review a few aspects of the development of differential geometry which may be considered as being influenced by Einstein's general relativity. We focus on how Einstein's quest for a complete geometrization of matter and…
Was Einstein wrong? This paper provides a detailed technical review of Einstein's special and general relativity from an astrophysical perspective, including the historical development of the theories, experimental tests, modern…
The confrontation between Einstein's theory of gravitation and experiment is summarized. Although all current experimental data are compatible with general relativity, the importance of pursuing the quest for possible deviations from…
This paper discusses Einstein's methodology. 1. Einstein characterized his work as a theory of principle and reasoned that beyond kinematics, the 1905 heuristic relativity principle could offer new connections between non-kinematical…
Astrobiology is a scientific discipline that studies life in the Universe. We call it a discipline and not a science because some authors have cast doubts over its epistemological status by calling it 'a science without an object of study'.…
It is known that Einstein's conceptual base for his theory of relativity was the philosophy formulated by Immanuel Kant. Things appear differently to observers in different frames. However, Kant's Ding-an-Sich leads to the existence of the…
Since its inception, quantum theory has been the subject of fierce interpretive controversy, which persists to this day. Disputed topics include the basic ontology and dynamics of the theory, the role (if any) of measurement, the meaning of…
The present discussion concerning certain fundamental physical theories (such as string theory and multiverse cosmology) has reopened the demarcation problem between science and non-science. While parts of the physics community see the…
Art history linked some early 20th Century avant-garde visual art movements to contemporary systems of ideas in mathematics and theoretical physics. One of the proposed connections is the one that might have existed between Cubism and…
Einstein is considered by many as the father of quantum physics in some sense. Yet there is an unshakable view that he was wrong on quantum physics. Although it may be a subject of considerable debate, the core of his allegedly wrong…
Contrary to claims about the irrelevance of philosophy for science, I argue that philosophy has had, and still has, far more influence on physics than is commonly assumed. I maintain that the current anti-philosophical ideology has had…
The confrontation between Einstein's gravitation theory and experimental results, notably binary pulsar data, is summarized and its significance discussed. Experiment and theory agree at the 10^{-3} level or better. All the basic structures…
This research presents the results of a comparative analysis of the links between religious practices and beliefs and levels of scientific knowledge. Based on secondary analyses of survey data in the European Union (Eurobarometers 2005 and…
Starting with Einstein's famous papers of 1905, we review some of the ensuing developments and their impact on present-day physics. We attempt to cover topics that are of interest to historians and philosophers of science as well as to…
We analyze some of Einstein's failures to accomplish tasks which he posed to himself, notably deterministic interpretation of Quantum mechanics and formulation of the Unified theory of physical interactions, putting them into broader…
Despite the extraordinary successes the two great bastions of $20^{th}$ century science (Quantum Theory and General Relativity) are troubled with serious conceptual and mathematical difficulties. As a result, further growth of fundamental…