Related papers: Inter-Theory Relations in Physics: Case Studies fr…
Because of the non-locality of quantum entanglement, realist approaches to completing quantum mechanics have implications for our conception of space. Quantum gravity also is expected to predict phenomena in which the locality of classical…
We begin by surveying the historical positions in different attempts to understand the material world since the rise of modern science, with specific focus on the role of Cartesian primary qualities in explanatory conceptualisation.…
This paper is based on four assumptions: 1. Physical reality is made of linearly behaving components combined in non-linear ways. 2. Higher level behaviour emerges from this lower level structure. 3. The way the lower level elements behaves…
It has been suggested, on the one hand, that quantum states are just states of knowledge; and, on the other, that quantum theory is merely a theory of correlations. These suggestions are confronted with problems about the nature of…
The relationship between classical and quantum theory is of central importance to the philosophy of physics, and any interpretation of quantum mechanics has to clarify it. Our discussion of this relationship is partly historical and…
It is argued that quantum mechanics follows naturally from the assumptions that there are no fundamental causal laws but only probabilities for physical processes that are constrained by symmetries, and reality is relational in the sense…
The need for revolution in modern physics is a well known and often broached subject, however, the precision and success of current models narrows the possible changes to such a great degree that there appears to be no major change…
Can a large system be fully characterized using its subsystems via inductive reasoning? Is it possible to completely reduce the behavior of a complex system to the behavior of its simplest "atoms"? In the following paper we answer these…
Physics is a model of nature able to both describe and predict the results of measurements made with respect to reference systems. These reference systems, in turn, are themselves physical and thus subject to the laws of physics. The…
This paper fires the opening salvo in the systematic construction of the lattice-continuum correspondence, a precise dictionary that describes the emergence of continuum quantum theories from finite, nonperturbatively defined models…
The interaction between two parts in a compound quantum system may be reconsidered more completely than before and some new understandings and conclusions different from current quantum mechanics are obtained, including the conservation law…
Decoherence may not solve all of the measurement problems of quantum mechanics. It is proposed that a solution to these problems may be to allow that superpositions describe physically real systems in the following sense. Each quantum…
General relativity can be recast as a theory of connections by performing a canonical transformation on its phase space. In this form, its (kinematical) structure is closely related to that of Yang-Mills theory and topological field…
This work is a conceptual analysis of certain recent developments in the mathematical foundations of Classical and Quantum Mechanics which have allowed to formulate both theories in a common language. From the algebraic point of view, the…
We have two aims. The main one is to expound the idea of renormalization in quantum field theory, with no technical prerequisites (Sections 2 and 3). Our motivation is that renormalization is undoubtedly one of the great ideas, and great…
Quantum theory brings into question the compatibility of the twin desiderata of exact knowability of the present state of the physical world and perfect predictability of its future states. Bohr's coordination-causality complementarity…
Alternative theories to quantum mechanics motivate important fundamental tests of our understanding and descriptions of the smallest physical systems. Here, using spontaneous parametric downconversion as a heralded single-photon source, we…
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…
Quantum theory makes the most accurate empirical predictions and yet it lacks simple, comprehensible physical principles from which the theory can be uniquely derived. A broad class of probabilistic theories exist which all share some…
This article discusses the relationship between emergence and reductionism from the perspective of a condensed matter physicist. Reductionism and emergence play an intertwined role in the everyday life of the physicist, yet we rarely stop…