Related papers: On Dualities and Equivalences Between Physical The…
We introduce a new way of quantifying the degrees of incompatibility of two ob- servables in a probabilistic physical theory and, based on this, a global measure of the degree of incompatibility inherent in such theories, across all…
Theoretical physics is the search for simple and universal mathematical descriptions of the natural world. In contrast, much of modern biology is an exploration of the complexity and diversity of life. For many, this contrast is prima facie…
Analogies have had and continue to have an important role in the development of theoretical physics. They may start from similarities of physical concepts followed by similarities in the mathematical formalization or it may be a purely…
In the literature, there have been several methods and definitions for working out if two theories are "equivalent" (essentially the same) or not. In this article, we do something subtler. We provide means to measure distances (and explore…
In recent years philosophers of science have explored categorical equivalence as a promising criterion for when two (physical) theories are equivalent. On the one hand, philosophers have presented several examples of theories whose…
In this paper, we argue that there are foundational dilemmas in theoretical physics related to the concept of reality and the nature of mathematics in physics. Physical theory is treated as a conceptual organism which develops under the…
Various dualities are summarized. Based on the universal wave-particle duality, along an opposite direction of the developed quantum mechanics, we use a method where the wave quantities frequency and wave length are replaced on various…
This paper aims to provide an analysis of what it means when we say that a pair of theories, very generously construed, are equivalent in the sense that they are interdefinable. With regard to theories articulated in first order logic, we…
We review the status of duality symmetries in superstring theories. These discrete symmetries mark the striking differences between theories of pointlike objects and theories of extended objects. They prove to be very helpful in…
Dualities offer new possibilities for relating fundamentality and emergence. In particular, as is the aim of this chapter to show, it may happen that the relations of fundamentality and emergence between dual theories are inverted. In other…
It is proposed that the physical universe is an instance of a mathematical structure which possesses a dual structure, and that this dual structure is the collection of all possible knowledge of the physical universe. In turn, the physical…
An ultimate universal theory -- a complete theory that accounts, via few and simple first principles, for all the phenomena already observed and that will ever be observed -- has been, and still is, the aspiration of most physicists and…
This is a very brief survey of some results in the geometry of string duality delivered at a lecture given at ICM 1998, Berlin. String Duality is the statement that one kind of string theory compactified on one space is equivalent in some…
This presentation is intended to give a flavour of the physics to be studied and discovered by exploiting the interface between string theory, M-theory and field theory provided by the dynamics of extended objects called `branes', and their…
There are several notions of duality between lines and points. In this note, it is shown that all these can be studied in a unified way. Most interesting properties are independent of specific choices. It is also shown that either dual…
We take quantum theory and replace $\mathbb{C}$ by $\mathbb{C}[\varepsilon]$ where $\varepsilon^2=0$, i.e. we extend quantum theory to the ring of dual complex numbers. The aim is to develop a common language in which to treat continuous…
Dualities in physics have challenged traditional forms of scientific realism by undermining the idea that theories describe a unique underlying ontology. In this paper, we develop a new perspective on scientific realism that responds to…
I describe our understanding of physics near the planck length, in particular the great progress of the last four years in string theory. Superstring theory, and a recent extension called M theory, are leading candidates for a quantum…
This is a philosophical paper. It claims that there is a gap to be filled in the relationship between complexity theory (CT) and quantum theory (QT). This gap concerns two very distinct understandings of time. The paper provides the ground…
We study in detail the space of perturbations of a pair of dual $N=1$ supersymmetric theories based on an $SU(N_c)$ gauge theory with an adjoint $X$ and fundamentals with a superpotential which is polynomial in $X$. The equivalence between…