Related papers: A Farewell to Falsifiability
A vast body of literature addresses the complex nature of science's reproducibility crisis. In contrast with this perceived complexity, some recent papers from the discipline of physics suggests that irreproducibility does not point to a…
Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) interpreted on finite traces is a robust specification framework popular in formal verification. However, despite the high interest in the logic in recent years, the topic of their quantitative extensions is not…
In their recent paper [Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 094101 (2007)], A. Porporato et al. studied the irreversibility and fluctuation theorem for stationary time series. In this comment, we point out that the fluctuation theorem is in fact the…
An overview of the experimental and observational status in gravitational physics is given, both for the known tests of general relativity and Newtonian gravity, but also for the increasing number of results where these theories run into…
The fiducial argument of Fisher (1973) has been described as his biggest blunder, but the recent review of Hannig et al. (2016) demonstrates the current and increasing interest in this brilliant idea. This short note analyses an example…
Despite the lack of experimental confirmation and of unambiguous theoretical proof, superstring theory has long been considered by many the only consistent quantized theory of gravity and the unique viable framework for the unification of…
Modern science increasingly relies on ever-growing observational datasets and automated inference pipelines, under the implicit belief that accumulating more data makes scientific conclusions more reliable. Here we show that this belief can…
Superstring theory, and a recent extension called M theory, are leading candidates for a quantum theory that unifies gravity with the other forces. As such, they are certainly not ordinary quantum field theories. However, recent duality…
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…
Reliability has long been treated as an engineering practice supported by testing, statistics and standards, yet its status as a scientific discipline remains unsettled. From a philosophical perspective, scientific truth is characterized by…
A new mathematics, the constructive one, characterizes a singular limit as undecidable. Hence, a singular limit between two theories actually represents a difference between two different kinds of mathematics. This particular situation…
There exist dozens of interpretations of quantum theory, but they do not seem to contribute much to understanding the theory. This paper attempts to clarify some issues that are discussed in those interpretations. The main keywords are:…
There has been a recent stimulus in the study of alternative theories of gravity lately, mostly triggered from combined motivation coming from cosmology/astrophysics and high energy physics. Among the proposed theories, one that has…
A strongly deterministic theory of physics is one that permits exactly one possible history of the universe. In the words of Penrose (1989), ''it is not just a matter of the future being determined by the past; the entire history of the…
Present day physics rests on two main pillars: General relativity and quantum field theory. We discuss the deep and at the same time problematic interplay between these two theories. Based on an argument by Doplicher, Fredenhagen, and…
In physics the value of a theory is measured by its agreement with experimental data. But how should the physics community gauge the value of an emerging theory that has not been tested experimentally as of yet? With no reality check, a…
The stipulation that no measurable quantity could have an infinite value is indispensable in physics. At the same time, in mathematics, the possibility of considering an infinite procedure as a whole is usually taken for granted. However,…
According to \textit{effective realism}, scientific theories give us knowledge about the unobservable world, but not at the fundamental level. This view is justified by the well-received \textit{effective-field-theory} (EFT) approach to…
In this short note we reply to a comment by Callegaro et al. [1] (arXiv:2009.11709) that points out some weakness of the model of indeterministic physics that we proposed in Ref. [2] (Physical Review A, 100(6), p.062107), based on what we…
Real-life conjectures do not come with instructions saying whether they they should be proven or, instead, refuted. Yet, as we now know, in either case the final argument produced had better be not just convincing but actually verifiable in…