Related papers: Law without law or "just" limit theorems?
Physical laws are strikingly simple, yet there is no a priori reason for them to be so. I propose that nomic realists -- Humeans and non-Humeans -- should recognize simplicity as a fundamental epistemic guide for discovering and evaluating…
We consider a model for spacetime in which there is an ubiquitous background Dark Energy which is the Zero Point Field. This is further modeled in terms of a Weiner process that leads to a Random or Brownian characterization. Nevertheless…
The main mystery of quantum mechanics is contained in Wheeler's delayed choice experiment, which shows that the past is determined by our choice of what quantum property to observe. This gives the observer a participatory role in deciding…
In his 1989 essay, John Archibald Wheeler has tried to answer the eternal question of existence. He did it by searching for links between information, physics, and quanta. The main concept emerging from his essay is that "every physical…
We give simple proofs, under minimal hypotheses, of the Weak Law of Large Numbers and the Central Limit Theorem for independent identically distributed random variables. These proofs use only the elementary calculus, together with the most…
Despite its apparent complexity, our world seems to be governed by simple laws of physics. This volume provides a philosophical introduction to such laws. I explain how they are connected to some of the central issues in philosophy, such as…
According to our current conception of physics, any valid physical theory is supposed to describe the objective evolution of a unique external world. However, this condition is challenged by quantum theory, which suggests that physical…
John Wheeler advocated the principle that information is the foundation of physics and asked us to reformulate physics in terms of bits. The goal is to consider what we know already and work out a new mathematical theory in which space,…
In this paper we suggest a formulation that would bear out the spirit of Prigogine's "Order Out of Chaos" and Wheeler's "Law Without Law". In it a typical elementary particle length, namely the pion Compton wavelength arises from the random…
It is argued that at a sufficiently deep level the conventional quantitative approach to the study of nature faces difficult problems, and that biological processes should be seen as more fundamental, in a way that can be elaborated on the…
The purpose of this paper is to outline a simple set of axioms for basic set theory from which most fundamental facts can be derived. The key to the whole project is a new axiom of set theory which I dubbed "The Law of Extremes". It allows…
The traditional formulation of the ultimate goal of physics (in the narrower sense of axiomatic theory) involves the derivation of physical laws from first principles. Though, such option doesn't make things easier since the task of the…
A colloquial interpretation of entropy is that it is the knowledge gained upon learning the outcome of a random experiment. Conditional entropy is then interpreted as the knowledge gained upon learning the outcome of one random experiment…
In this short presentation, we address two somewhat separate issues. The first one deals with the establishment (vs discovery) of what we call "physical laws". The discussion runs on a "successive approximations" approach, suited to our own…
The laws of quantum mechanics are couched in subtle mathematical language. The laws are not usually stated in a compact pedagogical form. Here I present a possible way to correct this. Essential facts can be distilled into seven statements…
If the quantum mechanical description of reality is not complete and a hidden variable theory is possible, what arises is the problem to explain where the rates of the outcomes of statistical experiments come from, as already noticed by…
David Finkelstein was very fond of the new information-theoretic paradigm of physics advocated by John Archibald Wheeler and Richard Feynman. Only recently, however, the paradigm has concretely shown its full power, with the derivation of…
Physics seeks to uncover the laws of Nature and express them through mathematical equations. Despite the vast diversity of natural phenomena, physical equations exhibit structural regularities that set them apart from arbitrary mathematical…
We study some aspects of the emergence of logos from chaos on a basal model of the universe using methods and techniques from algorithmic information and Ramsey theories. Thereby an intrinsic and unusual mixture of meaningful and spurious,…
As an attempt to realize Wheeler's "it-from-bit proposal" that physics should be reduced to simple yes-no questions we consider a model of loop quantum gravity, where the only allowed values of the quantum numbers $j_p$ at the punctures of…