Related papers: Rethinking the scientific enterprise: in defense o…
The aim of this paper is to review a new perspective about decoherence, according to which formalisms originally devised to deal just with closed or open systems can be subsumed under a closed-system approach that generalizes the…
Unlike mathematics, in which the notion of truth might be abstract, in physics, the emphasis must be placed on algorithmic procedures for obtaining numerical results subject to the experimental verifiability. For, a physical science is…
Optical experiments designed to explore quantum complementarity are reanalyzed. It is argued that, for each, a classical explanation is not only possible, but more coherent and less contrived. The final conclusion is that these experiments…
Computer science is also an experimental science. This is particularly the case for parallel computing, which is in a total state of flux, and where experiments are necessary to substantiate, complement, and challenge theoretical modeling…
The job of a physicist is to describe Nature. General features, hypotheses and theories help to describe physics phenomena at a more abstract, fundamental level, and are sometimes tacitly assigned some sort of real existence; doing so…
Scientific evaluation is a determinant of how scientists, institutions and funders behave, and as such is a key element in the making of science. In this article, we propose an alternative to the current norm of evaluating research with…
Evidence is growing for the theory of embodied cognition, which posits that action and perception co-determine each other, forming an action-perception loop. This suggests that we humans somehow participate in what we perceive. So, how can…
One hundred years after the creation of quantum theory, there is no consensus on the kind of reality that is described by the theory. Here, I attribute the lack of progress to the prevailing interpretative methodology, which invariably…
The use of science for policy is at the core of a perfect storm generated by the insurgence of several concurrent crises: of science, of trust, of sustainability. The modern positivistic model of science for policy, known as evidence based…
Abductive reasoning - the search for plausible explanations - has long been central to human inquiry, from forensics to medicine and scientific discovery. Yet formal approaches in AI have largely reduced abduction to eliminative search:…
Quantum theory describes our universe incredibly successfully. To our classically-inclined brains, however, it is a bizarre description that requires a re-imagining of what fundamental reality, or "ontology", could look like. This thesis…
In this introductory note, I describe my particular view of the notion of ontological commitments as honest and pragmatic working hypotheses that assume the existence (out there) of certain entities represented by the symbols in our theory.…
This book presents a methodology and philosophy of empirical science based on large scale lossless data compression. In this view a theory is scientific if it can be used to build a data compression program, and it is valuable if it can…
Cooperation is a widespread natural phenomenon yet current evolutionary thinking is dominated by the paradigm of selfish competition. Recent advanced in many fronts of Biology and Non-linear Physics are helping to bring cooperation to its…
This article looks at philosophical aspects and questions that modern astrophysical research gives rise to. Other than cosmology, astrophysics particularly deals with understanding phenomena and processes operating at "intermediate" cosmic…
This brief article presents the introduction and draft of the fundamental ideas developed at length in the book of the same title, which gives a challenging point of view about science and its history/philosophy/sociology. Science is in…
Cognitive theories for reasoning are about understanding how humans come to conclusions from a set of premises. Starting from hypothetical thoughts, we are interested which are the implications behind basic everyday language and how do we…
In this paper we argue against the orthodox definition of quantum entanglement which has been explicitly grounded on several "common sense" (metaphysical) presuppositions and presents today serious formal and conceptual drawbacks. This…
This is a preliminary version of an article to appear in the forthcoming Ashgate Companion to the New Philosophy of Physics. I don't advocate any particular approach to the measurement problem (not here, at any rate!) but I do focus on the…
In this paper, it is argued that theoretical physics is more akin to an organism than to a rigid structure.It is in this sense that the epithet, "sick", applies to it. It is argued that classical physics is a model of a healthy science, and…