Related papers: A Farewell to Falsifiability
We live at a time of contradictory messages about how successfully we understand gravity. General Relativity seems to work very well in the Earth's immediate neighborhood, but arguments abound that it needs modification at very small and/or…
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…
Elimination of quantifiers is shown to fail dramatically for a group of well-known mathematical theories (classically enjoying the property) against a wide range of relevant logical backgrounds. Furthermore, it is suggested that only by…
Theoretical physics is the search for simple and universal mathematical descriptions of the natural world. In contrast, much of modern biology is an exploration of the complexity and diversity of life. For many, this contrast is prima facie…
Our laws of nature and our cosmos appear to be delicately fine-tuned for life to emerge, in a way that seems hard to attribute to chance. In view of this, some have taken the opportunity to revive the scholastic Argument from Design,…
The dominance of string theory in the research landscape of quantum gravity physics (despite any direct experimental evidence) can, I think, be justified in a variety of ways. Here I focus on an argument from mathematical fertility, broadly…
We are in the middle of a remarkable paradigm shift in particle physics, a shift of opinion that occurred so slowly that some even try to deny that they changed their minds at all. It concerns a very basic question: can we expect to derive…
Using as a springboard a three-way debate between theoretical physicist Lee Smolin, philosopher of science Nancy Cartwright and myself, I address in layman's terms the issues of why we need a unified theory of the fundamental interactions…
In this work it is pointed out that some physical theories, even being themselves falsifiable, predict the existence of regions of spacetime which are not falsifiable with relation to each other due to their impossibility of mutually…
The generally accepted wisdom in computational circles is that pure proof verification is a solved problem and that the computationally hard elements and fertile areas of study lie in proof discovery. This wisdom presumably does hold for…
Quantum theory is incredibly successful, explaining the microscopic world with great accuracy, from the behaviour of subatomic particles to chemical reactions to solid-state electronics. There is not a single experimental finding…
I give a pedagogical explanation of what it is about quantization that makes general relativity go from being a nearly perfect classical theory to a very problematic quantum one. I also explain why some quantization of gravity is…
Recent criticism of higher-dimensional extensions of Einstein's theory is considered. This may have some justification as regards string theory, but is misguided as applied to five-dimensional theories with a large extra dimension. Such…
This essay presents a critical evaluation of the concepts of string theory and its impact on particle physics. The point of departure is a historical review of four decades of string theory within the broader context of six decades of…
When most people think of physics, they think of what they learned in high school physics: that the world is fundamentally predictable. Given the position and velocity of a particle in space, it should be possible to predict its position at…
If no optimal propositional proof system exists, we (and independently Pudl\'ak) prove that ruling out length $t$ proofs of any unprovable sentence is hard. This mapping from unprovable to hard-to-prove sentences powerfully translates facts…
We comment on the relation between string theory and empirical science, grounding our discussion in cosmology, a subject with increasingly precise data in which this connection operates at several levels. It is important to take into…
This paper examines the incommensurability thesis - one of the most important and controversial ideas to emerge from the simultaneous work of Kuhn and Feyerabend. In the first half, I discuss three aspects of incommensurability -…
We argue against current proposals concerning the non-existence of time. We point out that a large number of these proposals rely, at least implicitly, on the assumption of `closure' (or `partial closure') of the laws of Physics. I.e. the…
Empirical science needs to be based on facts and claims that can be reproduced. This calls for replicating the studies that proclaim the claims, but practice in most fields still fails to implement this idea. When such studies emerged in…