Related papers: What is "fundamental"?
This is a translation into English of my Masters thesis (hovedoppgave) from 1991. The main topic of the thesis is the relation between fundamental physics and philosophy, and a discussion of several possible ontologies of quantum field…
The physical processes that determine the properties of our everyday world, and of the wider cosmos, are determined by some key numbers: the 'constants' of micro-physics and the parameters that describe the expanding universe in which we…
In the last few decades, reading the literature, we realized that we Astronomers have a strong preference to undertake very ambitious projects, and search for answers to the most fundamental questions in the history of the entire Universe.…
Along with weaving together observations, experiments, and theoretical constructs into a coherent mesh of understanding of the world around us, physics over its past five centuries has continuously refined the base concepts on which the…
We present several philosophical ideas emerging from the studies of complex systems. We make a brief introduction to the basic concepts of complex systems, for then defining "abstraction levels". These are useful for representing…
Information is the basic concept of information theory. However, there is no definition of this concept that can encompass all uses of the term information in information theories and beyond. Many question a possibility of such a…
Despite the extraordinary successes the two great bastions of $20^{th}$ century science (Quantum Theory and General Relativity) are troubled with serious conceptual and mathematical difficulties. As a result, further growth of fundamental…
We advance a famous principle - causality principle - but under a new view. This principle is a principium automatically leading to most fundamental laws of the nature. It is the inner origin of variation, rules evolutionary processes of…
We discuss the fundamental principles underlying the current physical theories and the prospects of further improving their knowledge through experiments in space.
The question of what should be meant by a measurement is tackled from a mathematical perspective whose physical interpretation is that a measurement is a fundamental process via which a finite amount of classical information is produced.…
It is a quite common view among people, that are not aware of the developments in modern physics, that it is part of human nature to substitute religious faith in places where there is no knowledge. Therefore, an increase in knowledge would…
As David Berlinski writes (1997), the existence and nature of mathematics is a more compelling and far deeper problem than any of the problems raised by mathematics itself. Here we analyze the essence of mathematics making the main emphasis…
In physics, there is the prevailing intuition that we are part of a unique external world, and that the goal of physics is to understand and describe this world. This assumption of the fundamentality of objective reality is often seen as a…
It is a widespread belief that results like G\"odel's incompleteness theorems or the intrinsic randomness of quantum mechanics represent fundamental limitations to humanity's strive for scientific knowledge. As the argument goes, there are…
Over the past 25 years, I have been involved in some intriguing developments in the foundations of physics, exploring the quantum reality problem, the relationship between quantum theory and gravity and the interplay between consciousness…
Measurements play a crucial role in doing physics: Their results provide the basis on which we adopt or reject physical theories. In this note, we examine the effect of subjecting measurements themselves to our experience. We require that…
We acuminate the idea of a final theory of physics in order to analyze its logical implications and consequences. It is argued that the rationale of a final theory is the principle of sufficient reason. This implies that a final theory of…
A common method of making a theory more understandable, is by comparing it to another theory which has been better developed. Radical interpretation is a theory which attempts to explain how communication has meaning. Radical interpretation…
The epistemological interpretation of quantum mechanics is still in an unacceptable status. This becomes obvious if looking on the variety of interpretations currently under discussion. However, the physical community together with…
Quantum mechanics is a fundamentally probabilistic theory (at least so far as the empirical predictions are concerned). It follows that, if one wants to properly understand quantum mechanics, it is essential to clearly understand the…