Related papers: Against Fundamentalism
Concepts in a certain domain of science are linked via intrinsic connections reflecting the structure of knowledge. To get a qualitative insight and a quantitative description of this structure, we perform empirical analysis and modeling of…
During recent collaboration with colleagues to revise our institution's general-education curriculum, I encountered many perceptions of what we mean by the Natural Sciences. I was surprised to find that perceptions of scientific pedagogy…
I examine the debate between substantivalists and relationalists about the ontological character of spacetime and conclude it is not well posed. I argue that the so-called Hole Argument does not bear on the debate, because it provides no…
With the rise of foundation models, there is growing concern about their potential social impacts. Social science has a long history of studying the social impacts of transformative technologies in terms of pre-existing systems of power and…
In recent work, Nina Emery has defended the view that, in the context of naturalistic metaphysics, one should maintain the same epistemic attitude towards science and metaphysics. That is, naturalists who are scientific realists ought to be…
The growing adoption of foundation models calls for a paradigm shift from Data Science to Model Science. Unlike data-centric approaches, Model Science places the trained model at the core of analysis, aiming to interact, verify, explain,…
For this study, we compared the attitudes and beliefs about science of physical science (physics and mathematics) and life science (biochemistry and biology) students at the beginning of their university degrees using the CLASS (Colorado…
A generalized view of Duality is offered as a bridge between physical sciences and the more abstract philosophical dimensions bordering on mysticism. To that end several examples of duality are first cited from from conventional physics…
Many philosophers of physics maintain that a physical theory that exhibits (certain kinds of) symmetries is flawed, on the grounds that such theories posit "excess structure". In an influential paper, Dewar [2019, "Sophistication about…
Unlike mathematics, in which the notion of truth might be abstract, in physics, the emphasis must be placed on algorithmic procedures for obtaining numerical results subject to the experimental verifiability. For, a physical science is…
Researchers have argued against deficit-based explanations of students' troubles with mathematical sense-making, pointing instead to factors such as epistemology: students' beliefs about knowledge and learning can hinder them from…
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…
We discuss scientific realism from the perspective of modern cosmology, especially primordial cosmology: i.e. the cosmological investigation of the very early universe. We first (Section 2) state our allegiance to scientific realism, and…
Scientific collaboration is often perceived as a joint global process that involves researchers worldwide, regardless of their place of work and residence. Globalization of science, in this respect, implies that collaboration among…
Quantum physics has intrigued scientists and philosophers alike, because it challenges our notions of reality and locality--concepts that we have grown to rely on in our macroscopic world. It is an intriguing open question whether the…
There are many ways we can not know. Even in systems that we created ourselves, as, for example, systems in mathematical logic, Go\"edel and Tarski's theorems impose limits on what we can know. As we try to speak of the real world, things…
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…
At this point in time, two major areas of physics, statistical mechanics and quantum mechanics, rest on the foundations of probability and entropy. The last century saw several significant fundamental advances in our understanding of the…
The hard problem in consciousness is the problem of understanding how physical processes in the brain could give rise to subjective conscious experience. In this paper, I suggest that in order to understand the relationship between…
There is a serious disconnect between quantum theory and gravity. It occurs at the level of the very foundations of quantum theory, and is far deeper than just the matter of trying to quantize a non-linear theory. We shall examine some of…