Related papers: Nietzsche for physicists
This paper gives a short review of the history of statistical physics starting from D. Bernoulli's kinetic theory of gases in the 18th century until the recent new developments in nonequilibrium kinetic theory in the last decades of this…
From its very beginning, Quantum Theory developed contrary to the intentions of its creators. For Max Planck it marks the failure of a long-term research program, in which he tried to understand the 2nd law of thermodynamics…
"All men by nature desire to know," states Aristotle in the famous first sentence of his Metaphysics. Knowledge about fundamental particles and interactions, that is, knowledge about the deepest aspects of matter, is certainly high if not…
A number of philosophers and scientists have discussed the possibility of inseparability between the subject (i.e., the observer) and the object (i.e., the observed universe). In particular, it has recently been proposed that this…
The problematic relationship between science and philosophy has, since the beginning of modernity, divided the world into two separate domains: nature and human. Some of today's schools of philosophy and epistemological inquiry have…
We consider Einstein's attitude with regard to religion both from sociological and epistemological points of view. An attempt to put it into a wider socio-historical perspective has been made, with the emphasis on his ethnic and religious…
Norbert Wiener and J.B.S. Haldane suggested during the early thirties that the profound changes in our conception of matter entailed by quantum theory opens the way for our thoughts, and other experiential or mind-like qualities, to play a…
Even if Einstein brought major contributions as a founder of quantum mechanics, he remained deeply unsatisfied with the bases of this structure he knew to be so efficient for physics. His critics are often known through his numerous…
Einstein's happiest thought was his leap from the observation that a falling person feels no gravity to the realization that gravity might be equivalent to acceleration. It affects all bodies in the same way because it is a property of…
Causality is one of the most fundamental -- and yet elusive -- concepts in physics. From its intuitive role in everyday experience to its formal and often implicit role in scientific theories, causality has challenged philosophers and…
In this paper, I aim to clarify the unconscious ideologies and attitudes held by physicists through Prigogine's work. Prigogine was an outstanding chemist and physicist who made significant contributions to the development of…
A strongly deterministic theory of physics is one that permits exactly one possible history of the universe. In the words of Penrose (1989), ''it is not just a matter of the future being determined by the past; the entire history of the…
Aristotle was the first to declare himself in the class of natural philosophers ({\em physiologoi}) and he was the first physicist because he spelled out the first definitions of some basic physical concepts. Moreover, he was the first…
The way Leibniz applied his philosophy to mathematics has been the subject of longstanding debates. A key piece of evidence is his letter to Masson on bodies. We offer an interpretation of this often misunderstood text, dealing with the…
This is a brief introduction to the life and ideas of the Lithuanian-German physicist, philosopher and religious thinker Max B. Weinstein, who is today best known for his thoughts concerning so-called pandeism. An accomplished theoretical…
In the early 18th century, J. E. E. Bessler, known as Orffyreus, constructed several wheels that he claimed could keep turning forever, powered only by gravity. He never revealed the details of his invention, but he conducted demonstrations…
From 1929 to his death in 1944, A. Eddington worked on developing a highly ambitious theory of fundamental physics that covered everything in the physical world, from the tiny electron to the universe at large. His unfinished theory…
It is commonly known that the steady-state model of the universe was proposed and championed in a series of influential papers around mid-twenty century by Fred Hoyle, Hermann Bondi, and Thomas Gold. In contrast it is little known that,…
I combine the effects of Planck length, general relativity and Newtonian gravity in one equation, to come up with a semi-classical model of gravity in the form of deviation from Newtonian gravity. Einstein explained nuclear forces in terms…
Dans ce colloque je discute la notion d'espace selon Descartes et Leibniz et j'y oppose le point de vue de Samuel Clarke et Isaac Newton comme solution pour comprendre la r\'ealit\'e du monde physique