Related papers: Mysteries of Visual Experience
We approach the question "What is Consciousness?" in a new way, not as Descartes' "systematic doubt", but as how organisms find their way in their world. Finding one's way involves finding possible uses of features of the world that might…
The origin and meaning of facial beauty represent a longstanding puzzle. Despite the profuse literature devoted to facial attractiveness, its very nature, its determinants and the nature of inter-person differences remain controversial…
At the frontier of most areas in science, computer simulations play a central role. The traditional division of natural science into experimental and theoretical investigations is now completely outdated. Instead, theory, simulation, and…
For most writers the science is either an exotic setting or a source of thrilling conflict that would drive the story forward. For a communicator it is the other way around - the science is neatly wrapped in a package of literary tools that…
Quantum mechanics has maintained over the years the reputation of being "the most obscure theory." It works perfectly well, but nobody seems to know why. It has been argued that the difficulty in understanding quantum theory is our failed…
Is the universe digital or analog? In this essay I argue that both classical and quantum physics include limits that prevent us from definitively answering that question. That quantum physics does so is no surprise. That classical physics…
Cosmology is operating now on a well established and tightly constraining empirical basis. The relativistic LambdaCDM hot big bang theory is consistent with all the present tests; it has become the benchmark. But the many open issues in…
Cosmology today is confronted with several seemingly insoluble puzzles and strange, inexplicable coincidences. But a careful re-examination of the Cosmological principle and the Weyl postulate, foundational elements in this subject,…
Church's hypothesis and Godel's theorem may provide constraints on mental processes.As a relief quantum entanglement may lead to a definite proposal as regards the nature of reality and how much of it we are able to know and how do we know…
This paper presents yet another personal reflection on one the most important concepts in both science and the humanities: time. This elusive notion has been not only bothering philosophers since Plato and Aristotle. It goes throughout…
This contribution argues that the notion of time used in the scientific modeling of reality deprives time of its real nature. Difficulties from logic paradoxes to mathematical incompleteness and numerical uncertainty ensue. How can the…
We take our world to be an objective reality, but is it? The assumption that the physical world exists in and of itself has struggled to assimilate the findings of modern physics for some time now. For example, an objective space and time…
The question of what ontological message (if any) is encoded in the formalism of contemporary physics is, to say the least, controversial. The reasons for this state of affairs are psychological and neurobiological. The processes by which…
The acceleration of the cosmic expansion is a fundamental challenge to standard models of particle physics and cosmology. The new physics of dark energy may lie in the nature of gravity, the quantum vacuum, or extra dimensions. I give a…
Richard Feynman famously declared, "I think that I can safely say that nobody really understands quantum mechanics." Sean Carroll lamented the persistence of this sentiment in a recent opinion piece entitled, "Even Physicists Don't…
The constantly growing body of scholarly knowledge of science, technology, and humanities is an asset of the mankind. While new discoveries expand the existing knowledge, they may simultaneously render some of it obsolete. It is crucial for…
Some thoughts are presented on the inter-relation between beauty and truth in science in general and theoretical physics in particular. Some conjectural procedures that can be used to create new ideas, concepts and results are illustrated…
Since its inception at the beginning of the twentieth century, quantum mechanics has challenged our conceptions of how the universe ought to work; however, the equations of quantum mechanics can be too computationally difficult to solve…
One might think that, once we know something is computable, how efficiently it can be computed is a practical question with little further philosophical importance. In this essay, I offer a detailed case that one would be wrong. In…
A qualitatively new, much more liberal and efficient organisation of science is proposed and justified, in connection with growing debate about further role and development of fundamental science. Although the key ideas can be explained…