Related papers: Variations on chaos in physics: from unpredictabil…
Physics is so successful today in understanding the nature of matter. What can it say about mind ? Is it possible to have a unified theory of matter and mind within the framework of modern science ? Is Consciousness an accident or is it a…
Chaos as typical property of non-linear systems has revealed its crucial role in various problems of astrophysics and cosmology. The problems discussed at these lectures include planetary dynamics, galactic dynamics, reconstruction of the…
The search for a theory of quantum gravity faces two great challenges: the incredibly small scales of the Planck length and time, and the possibility that the observed constants of nature are in part the result of random processes. A…
One of the presuppositions of science since the times of Galileo, Newton, Laplace, and Descartes has been the predictability of the world. This idea has strongly influenced scientific and technological models. However, in recent decades,…
Since ancient times, mathematics has proven unreasonably effective in its description of physical phenomena. As humankind enters a period of advancement where the completion of the much coveted theory of quantum gravity is at hand, there is…
The noninvariance of Lyapunov exponents in general relativity has led to the conclusion that chaos depends on the choice of the space-time coordinates. Strikingly, we uncover the transformation laws of Lyapunov exponents under general…
A variety of physical unknowables are discussed. Provable lack of physical omniscience, omnipredictability and omnipotence is derived by reduction to problems which are known to be recursively unsolvable. "Chaotic" symbolic dynamical…
Special relativity is no longer a new revolutionary theory but a firmly established cornerstone of modern physics. The teaching of special relativity, however, still follows its presentation as it unfolded historically, trying to convince…
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…
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:…
A close relation has recently emerged between two of the most fundamental concepts in physics and mathematics: chaos and supersymmetry. In striking contrast to the semantics of the word 'chaos,' the true physical essence of this phenomenon…
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…
The fundamental laws of physics are time-symmetric, but our macroscopic experience contradicts this. The time reversibility paradox is partly a consequence of the unpredictability of Newton's equations of motion. We measure the dependence…
In many real world chaotic systems, the interest is typically in determining when the system will behave in an extreme manner. Flooding and drought, extreme heatwaves, large earthquakes, and large drops in the stock market are examples of…
The quantum-mechanical description of the world, including human observers, makes substantial use of entanglement. In order to understand this, we need to adopt concepts of truth, probability and time which are unfamiliar in modern…
Fuzziness and randomicity widespread exist in natural science, engineering, technology and social science. The purpose of this paper is to present a new logic - uncertain propositional logic which can deal with both fuzziness by taking…
A general theory of innovation and progress in human society is outlined, based on the combat between two opposite forces (conservatism/inertia and speculative herding "bubble" behavior). We contend that human affairs are characterized by…
The butterfly effect is today commonly identified with the sensitive dependence of deterministic chaotic systems upon initial conditions. However, this is only one facet of the notion of unpredictability pioneered by Lorenz, who actually…
In the last 175 years, the physical understanding of nature has seen a revolutionary change. Until about 1850, Newton's theory and the mechanical world view derived from it provided the dominant view of the physical world, later…
The theory of regularity is a philosophical perspective in which laws of nature are just descriptions, that is to say, laws of nature do not govern the world. Moreover, according to the theory of regularity, the number of laws of nature…