Related papers: A Theory of Scientific Practice
In the past century many fundamental results on unpredictability, undecidability and uncertainty have compelled scientists to grapple with the idea that some questions may never be resolved within our current theories. While this…
We examine the sub-field of philosophy of science using a new method developed in information science, Referenced Publication Years Spectroscopy (RPYS). RPYS allows us to identify peak years in citations in a field, which promises to help…
The fundamental physical theories that interpret and explain behaviour of matter in nature are dependent on several unobservables and insensibles in their construction. While a rigorous natural philosophy cannot take them for granted, there…
Both religion and science start with basic assumptions that cannot be proved but are taken on faith. Here I note that one basic assumption that is rather common in both enterprises is the assumption that in comparing different hypotheses…
The observation of the nature and world represents the main source of human knowledge on the basis of our reason. At the present it is also the use of precise measurement approaches, which may contribute significantly to the knowledge of…
Quantum mechanics, one of the most successful theories in the history of science, was created to account for physical systems not describable by classical physics. Though it is consistent with all experiments conducted thus far, many of its…
Why do nations produce scientific research? This is a fundamental problem in the field of social studies of science. The paper confronts this question here by showing vital determinants of science to explain the sources of social power and…
Philosophers frequently struggle with the relation of metaphysics to the everyday world, with its practical value, and with its relation to empirical science. This paper distinguishes several different models of the relation between…
A fundamental problem in science is how to make logical inferences from scientific data. Mere data does not suffice since additional information is necessary to select a domain of models or hypotheses and thus determine the likelihood of…
This paper is based on four assumptions: 1. Physical reality is made of linearly behaving components combined in non-linear ways. 2. Higher level behaviour emerges from this lower level structure. 3. The way the lower level elements behaves…
As David Berlinski writes (1997), the existence and nature of mathematics is a more compelling and far deeper problem than any of the problems raised by mathematics itself. Here we analyze the essence of mathematics making the main emphasis…
It is argued that the traditional "realist" methodology of physics, according to which human concepts, laws and theories can grasp the essence of reality, is incompatible with the most fruitful interpretation of quantum formalism. The proof…
The usual formulation of quantum theory is rather abstract. In recent work I have shown that we can, nevertheless, obtain quantum theory from five reasonable axioms. Four of these axioms are obviously consistent with both classical…
Quantum theory shares with classical probability theory many important properties. I show that this common core regards at least the following six areas, and I provide details on each of these: the logic of propositions, symmetry,…
Disagreement is essential to scientific progress. However, the extent of disagreement in science, its evolution over time, and the fields in which it happens, remains poorly understood. Leveraging a massive collection of English-language…
In the absence of empirical confirmation, scientists may judge a theory's chances of being viable based on a wide range of arguments. The paper argues that such arguments can differ substantially with regard to their structural similarly to…
Over the past two decades, the rapid surge in data-intensive computational techniques for statistical modeling may have had the effect of diminishing the use of applied mathematics in causal scientific inquiry. In this paper, co-authored by…
A general information-theoretic framework for deriving physical laws is presented and a principle of informational physics is enunciated within its context. Existing approaches intended to derive physical laws from information-theoretic…
It is often stated that there are no laws in biology, where everything is contingent and could have been otherwise, being solely the result of historical accidents. Furthermore, the customary introduction of fundamental biological entities…
We claim that human mathematics is only a limited part of the consequences of the chosen basic axioms. Properly human mathematics varies with time but appears to have universal features which we try to analyze. In particular the functioning…