Related papers: What does it mean to "make sense" of physics?
Physics has a bad press: it is seen by a majority of people as a boring discipline ever since their High School days. There is no glamour to it, just toil and pain, and for many who engaged in it, the end sight is often unemployment. Could…
The purpose of this paper is to show the magic of physics by showing the physics of magic. What usually makes magic tricks interesting is that something unexpected occurs. Similarly, demonstrations are interesting inasmuch as they produce…
Making meaning with math in physics requires blending physical conceptual knowledge with mathematical symbology. Students in introductory physics classes often struggle with this, but it is an essential component of learning how to think…
Discussion of some aspects of the concept of time for a general audience: nature of time, A- and B-series, time in physics, the "now", measurement of time, definition of time units, time's arrow, relativity of time, relativity of…
Courses in mathematical methods for physics students are not known for including too much in the way of mathematical rigour and, in some ways, understandably so. However, the conditions under which some quite commonly used mathematical…
Mathematics is a critical part of much scientific research. Physics in particular weaves math extensively into its instruction beginning in high school. Despite much research on the learning of both physics and math, the problem of how to…
Mathematics is the language of science. Fluent and productive use of mathematics requires one to understand the meaning embodied in mathematical symbols, operators, syntax, etc., which can be a difficult task. For instance, in algebraic…
It goes without saying that we are stuck with the universe we have. Nevertheless, we would like to go beyond simply describing our observed universe, and try to understand why it is that way rather than some other way. Physicists and…
Why is the universe comprehensible? How is it that we can come to know its regularities well-enough to exploit them for our own gain? In this essay I argue that the nature of our comprehension lies in the mutually agreed upon methodology we…
Philosophy of science attempts to describe all parts of the scientific process in a general way in order to facilitate the description, execution and improvements of this process. So far, all proposed philosophies have only covered existing…
I want to combine two hitherto largely independent research projects, scientific understanding and mechanistic explanations. Understanding is not only achieved by answering why-questions, that is, by providing scientific explanations, but…
I explore whether it is possible to make sense of the quantum mechanical description of physical reality by taking the proper subject of physics to be correlation and only correlation, and by separating the problem of understanding the…
Contrary to claims about the irrelevance of philosophy for science, I argue that philosophy has had, and still has, far more influence on physics than is commonly assumed. I maintain that the current anti-philosophical ideology has had…
It seems natural to ask why the universe exists at all. Modern physics suggests that the universe can exist all by itself as a self-contained system, without anything external to create or sustain it. But there might not be an absolute…
A major question in philosophy of science involves the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in physics. Why should mathematics, created or discovered, with nothing empirical in mind be so perfectly suited to describe the laws of the…
Most physics theories are deterministic, with the notable exception of quantum mechanics which, however, comes plagued by the so-called measurement problem. This state of affairs might well be due to the inability of standard mathematics to…
It is argued that the problem of interpreting quantum mechanics, and the philosophical problem of consciousness, both have their roots in the same set of misguided Cartesian assumptions. The confusions underlying those assumptions are…
We investigate studnets' use of words used in everyday language as well as in physics. We find students are more likely to identify and explain the meaning of the word as it is used in physics when they have become familiar with the…
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…
A primary goal of physics is to create mathematical models that allow both predictions and explanations of physical phenomena. We weave maths extensively into our physics instruction beginning in high school, and the level and complexity of…