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The paper starts with the proposal that the cause of the apparent insolubility of the free-will problem are several popular but strongly metaphysical notions and hypotheses. To reduce the metaphysics, some ideas are borrowed from physics. A…
Every quantum physical system can be considered the ''shadow'' of a special kind of classical system. The system proposed here is classical mainly because each observable function has a well precise value on each state of the system: an…
Without a doubt many problems in physics arise as a consequence of our philosophical conception of the world. In this contribution however we endeavor to alleviate this scenario by putting forward a philosophical approach under which some…
Under the assumption that General Relativity (GR) correctly describes the phenomenology of our Universe, astronomical observations provide compelling evidence that (1) the dynamics of cosmic structure is dominated by dark matter (DM), an…
The formalism of quantum theory over discrete systems is extended in two significant ways. First, quantum evolutions are generalized to act over entire network configurations, so that nodes may find themselves in a quantum superposition of…
Quantum physics is a linear theory, so it is somewhat puzzling that it can underlie very complex systems such as digital computers and life. This paper investigates how this is possible. Physically, such complex systems are necessarily…
Lecture script of a one-semester course that aims to develop an understanding and appreciation of fundemental concepts in modern physics for students who are comfortable with calculus. This document contains the last part of the course…
String theory is accused by some of its critics to be a purely abstract mathematical discipline, having lost the contact to the simple yet deeply rooted questions which physics provided until the beginning of this century. We argue that, in…
Based on the model of a "soft" cellular space and deterministic quantum mechanics developed previously, the scattering of a free moving particle by structural units of the space -- superparticles -- is studied herein. The process of energy…
As an approach to a Theory of Everything a framework for developing a coherent theory of mathematics and physics together is described. The main characteristic of such a theory is discussed: the theory must be valid and and sufficiently…
In light of G\"{o}del's undecidability results (incomplete theorems) for math, quantum indeterminism indicates that physics and the Universe may be indeterministic, incomplete, and open in nature, and therefore demand no single unification…
There is a deeply entrenched view in philosophy and physics, the closed systems view, according to which isolated systems are conceived of as fundamental. On this view, when a system is under the influence of its environment this is…
We consider the possibility that all particles in the world are fundamentally identical, i.e., belong to the same species. Different masses, charges, spins, flavors, or colors then merely correspond to different quantum states of the same…
After sketching a context in which to seek observable signals of spatio-temporal discreteness, I briefly review the status of the causal set program for quantum gravity, concluding with a simple model for the field produced by a moving…
This article describes the various experimental bounds on the variation of the fundamental constants of nature. After a discussion on the role of fundamental constants, of their definition and link with metrology, the various constraints on…
It is shown that in a quantum theory over a Galois field, the famous Dirac's result about antiparticles is generalized such that a particle and its antiparticle are already combined at the level of irreducible representations of the…
We study deterministic and quantum dynamics from a constructive "finite" point of view, since the introduction of a continuum, or other actual infinities in physics poses serious conceptual and technical difficulties, without any need for…
Without wasting time and effort on philosophical justifications and implications, we write down the conditions for the Hamiltonian of a quantum system for rendering it mathematically equivalent to a deterministic system. These are the…
We note that in general there exist two basic aspects in any branch of physics, including cosmology - one dealing with the attributes of basic constituents and forces of nature, the other dealing with how structures arise from them and how…
The paper sets out a primitive ontology of the natural world in terms of primitive stuff, that is, stuff that has as such no physical properties at all, but that is not a bare substratum either, being individuated by metrical relations. We…