Related papers: Thick Presentism and Newtonian Mechanics
Despite its apparent simplicity, Newtonian Mechanics contains conceptual subtleties that may cause some confusion to the deep-thinking student. These subtleties concern fundamental issues such as, e.g., the number of independent laws needed…
The aim of this work is to show that particle mechanics, both classical and quantum, Hamiltonian and Lagrangian, can be derived from few simple physical assumptions. Assuming deterministic and reversible time evolution will give us a…
It is often claimed that the fundamental laws of physics are deterministic and time-symmetric and that therefore our experience of the passage of time is an illusion. This paper will critically discuss these claims and show that they are…
This paper argues that the physics of condensed matter cannot be fully reduced to the supposedly fundamental quantum mechanical theory for all the atoms of which the system consists. In fact, there are many reasons to reject the idea that…
In a series of essays, beginning with this article, we are going to develop a new formulation of micro-phenomena based on the principles of reality and causality. The new theory provides with us a new depiction of micro-phenomena assuming…
In the present essay we attempt to reconstruct Newtonian mechanics under the guidance of logical principles and of a constructive approach related to the genetic epistemology of J. Piaget and R. Garc\'ia \citep{piag89}. Instead of…
The notion of microscopic state of the system at a given moment of time as a point in the phase space as well as a notion of trajectory is widely used in classical mechanics. However, it does not have an immediate physical meaning, since…
The operational formalism to quantum mechanics seeks to base the theory on a firm foundation of physically well-motivated axioms [1]. It has succeeded in deriving the Feynman rules [2] for general quantum systems. Additional elaborations…
A Newtonian mechanics model is essentially the model of a point body in an inertial reference frame. How to describe extended bodies in non-inertial (vibrational) reference frames with the random initial conditions? One of the most general…
In this article we present a possible way to make usual quantum mechanics fully compatible with physical realism, defined as the statement that the goal of physics is to study entities of the natural world, existing independently from any…
Newton set the stage for our view of how science should be done. We remain in what I will call the `Newtonian Paradigm' in all of physics, including Newton, Einstein, and Schrodinger. As I will show shortly, Newton invented and bequeathed…
This paper forms part of a wider campaign: to deny pointillisme. That is the doctrine that a physical theory's fundamental quantities are defined at points of space or of spacetime, and represent intrinsic properties of such points or…
A qualitative but formalized representation of microstates is first established quite independently of the quantum mechanical mathematical formalism, exclusively under epistemological-operational-methodological constraints. Then, using this…
There has been a recent spate of essays defending presentism, the view in the metaphysics of time according to which all and only present events or entities exist. What is particularly striking about this resurgence is that it takes place…
Starting from the guiding principles of spacetime locality and operationalism, a general framework for a probabilistic description of nature is proposed. Crucially, no notion of time or metric is assumed, neither any specific physical…
We present a new metaphysical framework for physics that is conceptually clear, ontologically parsimonious, and empirically adequate. This framework relies on the notion of self-subsisting structure, that is, a set of fundamental physical…
The centuries-long practice of the teaching turned mechanics into an academic construct detached from its underlying science, the physics of macroscopic bodies. In particular, the regularities that delineate the scope of validity of…
The paper has heuristic character. The conceptual frame, based on the assumption of quantum uncertainty only, has been formerly introduced in two papers [S. Tosto, Il Nuovo Cimento B, vol. 111, n.2, 1996 and S. Tosto, Il Nuovo Cimento D,…
The quantum formalism is a ``measurement'' formalism--a phenomenological formalism describing certain macroscopic regularities. We argue that it can be regarded, and best be understood, as arising from Bohmian mechanics, which is what…
The idea of a moving present or `now' seems to form part of our most basic beliefs about reality. Such a present, however, is not reflected in any of our theories of the physical world. I show in this article that presentism, the doctrine…