Related papers: Max Weinstein: Physics, Philosophy, Pandeism
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…
During his whole scientific life Hermann Weyl was fascinated by the interrelation of physical and mathematical theories. From the mid 1920s onward he reflected also on the typical difference between the two epistemic fields and tried to…
Orthodox Copenhagen quantum theory renounces the quest to understand the reality in which we are imbedded, and settles for practical rules describing connections between our observations. Many physicist have regarded this renunciation of…
In the context of theories of the connection between mind and brain, physicalism is the demand that all is basically purely physical. But the concept of "physical" embodied in this demand is characterized essentially by the properties of…
Consciousness and quantum mechanics are among the most puzzling phenomena studied in the sciences. Some scholars suggest they are related, though others think this claim commits a "minimization of mystery" fallacy. The aim of this…
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…
A short scientific biography is given of physicist Paul Wesson (1949-2015), who published over 300 works encompassing the fields of astrobiology, astrophysics, geophysics, cosmology, and relativity; and who was particularly associated with…
The first three sections of this article contain a broad brush summary of the profound changes in the notion of time in fundamental physics that were brought about by three revolutions: the foundations of mechanics distilled by Newton in…
Karl Pearson is the leading figure of XX century statistics. He and his co-workers crafted the core of the theory, methods and language of frequentist or classical statistics -- the prevalent inductive logic of contemporary science.…
The cultural infrastructure that let Galileo invent the modern physics is discussed. The key new element of modern physics was firm belief in its fundamental structure, which could be expressed in the double postulate: 1) There are…
A long-standing tradition, largely present in both the physical and the philosophical literature, regards the advent of (special) relativity -- with its block-universe picture -- as the failure of any indeterministic program in physics. On…
Both Albert Einstein and Erwin Schr\"{o}dinger have defined what science is. Einstein includes not only physics, but also all natural sciences dealing with both organic and inorganic processes in his definition of science. According to…
This article looks at philosophical aspects and questions that modern astrophysical research gives rise to. Other than cosmology, astrophysics particularly deals with understanding phenomena and processes operating at "intermediate" cosmic…
In 1960 in Stuttgart, Max Bense published the book Programming the Beautiful [Programmierung des Sch{\"o}nen]. Bense looks in cybernetics for scientific concepts and instigates the thought of programming in the field of literature. His…
We first see that the inertia of Newtonian mechanics is absolute and troublesome. General relativity can be viewed as Einstein's attempt to remedy, by making inertia relative, to matter---perhaps imperfectly though, as at least a couple of…
We are interested here in the program of reconstruction of quantum mechanics of the German physicist and philosopher Carl Friedrich von Weizs\"{a}cker, which still has some supporters today. In the major part of this article, we limit…
I argue that Einstein overlooked an important aspect of the relativity of time in never quite realizing his quest to embody Mach's principle in his theory of gravity. As a step towards that goal, I broaden the Strong Equivalence Principle…
Einstein's happiest thought was his leap from the observation that a falling person feels no gravity to the realization that gravity might be equivalent to acceleration. It affects all bodies in the same way because it is a property of…
Why is it interesting to try to understand the origin of the universe? Everything we observe today, including our existence, arose from that event. Although we still do not have a theory that allows us to describe the origin itself, the…
Cosmology and particle physics have long been dominated by theoretical paradigms: Einstein's general theory of relativity in cosmology and the Standard Model of particle physics. The time may have come for paradigm shifts. Does cosmological…