Related papers: Variations on chaos in physics: from unpredictabil…
A long-standing tradition, largely present in both the physical and the philosophical literature, regards the advent of (special) relativity -- with its block-universe picture -- as the failure of any indeterministic program in physics. On…
The concept of structural invariance previously introduced by the authors is used to argue that the connection between random matrix theory and quantum systems with a chaotic classical counterpart is in fact largely exact in the…
Nowadays there is no universally accepted definition of quantum chaos. In this paper we review and critically discuss different approaches to the subject, such as Quantum Chaology and the Random Matrix Theory. Then we analyze the problem of…
In this paper, we present a unified framework of multiple attractors including multistability, multiperiodicity and multichaos. Multichaos, which means that the chaotic solution of a system lies in different disjoint invariant sets with…
Our assumption that spacetime is a continuum leads to many challenges in mathematical physics. Singularities, divergent integrals and the like threaten many of our favorite theories, from Newtonian gravity to classical electrodynamics,…
The power law is ubiquitous in natural and social phenomena, and is considered as a universal relationship between the frequency and its rank for diverse social systems. However, a general model is still lacking to interpret why these…
Chaotic systems arise naturally in Statistical Mechanics and in Fluid Dynamics. A paradigm for their modelization are smooth hyperbolic systems. Are there consequences that can be drawn simply by assuming that a system is hyperbolic? here…
We revisit the vexed question of how unpredictability can arise in a deterministic universe, focusing on unitary quantum theory. We discuss why quantum unpredictability is irrelevant for the possibility of what some people call `free-will',…
Quantitative linguistics has provided us with a number of empirical laws that characterise the evolution of languages and competition amongst them. In terms of language usage, one of the most influential results is Zipf's law of word…
Nonlinear dynamics (``chaos theory'') and quantum mechanics are two of the scientific triumphs of the 20th century. The former lies at the heart of the modern interdisciplinary approach to science, whereas the latter has revolutionized…
We investigate the structure common to causal theories that attempt to explain a (part of) the world. Causality implies conservation of identity, itself a far from simple notion. It imposes strong demands on the universalizing power of the…
A critical analysis of the relativistic formulation of matter reveals some surprising inconsistencies and paradoxes. Corrections are discovered which lead to the long-sought-after equality of the gravitational and inertial masses, which are…
There is a persistent confusion about determinism and predictability. In spite of the opinions of some eminent philosophers (e.g., Popper), it is possible to understand that the two concepts are completely unrelated. In few words we can say…
In recent years there has been a considerable increase in the publishing of textbooks and monographs covering what was formerly known as random or irregular deterministic motion, now named by the more fashionable term of deterministic…
Causality never gained the status of a "law" or "principle" in physics. Some recent literature even popularized the false idea that causality is a notion that should be banned from theory. Such misconception relies on an alleged…
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…
Two people may claim both to be naturalists, but have divergent conceptions of basic elements of the natural world which lead them to mean different things when they talk about laws of nature, or states, or the role of mathematics in…
Constructor theory seeks to express all fundamental scientific theories in terms of a dichotomy between possible and impossible physical transformations - those that can be caused to happen and those that cannot. This is a departure from…
The work concentrates on relations, which are general and model independent in chaotic system, between time averages of a few (typically {\it very few}) observables. Equilibrium thermodynamics provides a guide and here is attempted to argue…
If a cat, a cannonball, and an economics textbook are all dropped from the same height, they fall to the ground with exactly the same acceleration under the influence of gravity. This equality of gravitational accelerations of different…