Related papers: Should Classical Physics Be Interpreted Indetermin…
Physicists are increasingly beginning to take seriously the possibility of laws outside the traditional time-evolution paradigm; yet our understanding of determinism is still predicated on a forwards time-evolution picture, making it…
Do scientific theories limit human knowledge? In other words, are there physical variables hidden by essence forever? We argue for negative answers and illustrate our point on chaotic classical dynamical systems. We emphasize parallels with…
Quantum mechanics can seem like a departure from everyday experience of the physical world, but constructivist theories assert that learners build new ideas from their existing ones. To explore how students can navigate this tension, we…
A central feature in the Copenhagen interpretation is the use of classical concepts from the outset. Modern developments show, however, that the emergence of classical properties can be understood within the framework of quantum theory…
In classical physics, probabilistic or statistical knowledge has been always related to ignorance or inaccurate subjective knowledge about an actual state of affairs. This idea has been extended to quantum mechanics through a completely…
It is generally accepted that quantum mechanics entails a revision of the classical propositional calculus as a consequence of its physical content. However, the universal claim according to which a new quantum logic is indispensable in…
Some hypotheses in modern theoretical physics that have not any experimental verification are listed. The goal of the paper is not to criticize or be lawyers any of these hypotheses. The purpose is focus physicists attention on that now…
The indeterministic character of physical laws is generally considered to be the most important consequence of quantum physics. A deterministic point of view, however, together with the possibility of well defined Hamiltonian trajectories,…
This is a systematic review of the concept of indistinguishability in both classical and quantum mechanics, with particular attention to Gibbs' paradox. Section 1 is on the Gibbs paradox; section 2 is a defense of the concept of classical…
Classical results on aperiodic tilings are rather complicated and not widely understood. Below, an alternative approach is discussed in hope to provide additional intuition not apparent in classical works.
It is argued that the usual postulates of quantum mechanics are too strong. It is conjectured that it is possible to interpret all experiments if we maintain the formalism of quantum theory without modification, but weaken the postulates…
We review how antiparticles may be introduced in classical relativistic mechanics, and emphasize that many of their paradoxical properties can be more transparently understood in the classical than in the quantum domain.
Classical limits of quantum systems are shown to lead to different conceptions of spaces different from the classical one underlying the process of quantization of such systems. The accent is put in situations where traces of…
Quantum Mechanics, almost 80 years after its arrival, is a well established and experimentally not falsified theory. It has predicted and explained a whole series of natural phenomena of a very delicate nature. But its interpretation has…
The aim of this work is to show how Einstein's quantum hypothesis leads immediately and necessarily to a departure from classical mechanics. First we note that the classical description and predictions are in terms of idealized measurements…
We introduce a logical framework for reasoning about "uncertain interpretations" and investigate two key applications: a new semantics for implication capturing a kind of "meaning entailment", and a conservative notion of "evidentially…
We consider a philosophical question that is implicit in Selmer Bringsjord's paper, "The narrational case against Church's Thesis": If, as Mendelson argues, the classically accepted definitions of foundational concepts such as "partial…
The view of nature we adopt in the natural attitude is determined by common sense, without which we could not survive. Classical physics is modelled on this common-sense view of nature, and uses mathematics to formalise our natural…
The fallacies associated with the gauge concept in electromagnetism are illustrated. A clearer and more valid formulation of the basics of classical electromagnetism is provided by recognizing existing physical constraints as well as the…
There is knowledge. There is belief. And there is tacit agreement.' 'We may talk about objects. We may talk about attributes of the objects. Or we may talk both about objects and their attributes.' This work inspects tacit agreements on…