Related papers: Understanding Physics: 'What?', 'Why?', and 'How?'
Quantum Mechanics (QM) stands alone as a (very) successful physical theory, but the meaning of its variables and the status of many quantities in the mathematical formalism is obscure. This unique situation prompted the need for attribution…
Using information theory we derive a thermodynamics for systems evolving under a collective motion, i.e. under a time-odd constraint. An illustration within the Lattice gas Model is given for two model cases: a collision between two complex…
Quantum Thermodynamics is a continuous dialogue between two independent theories: Thermodynamics and Quantum Mechanics. Whenever the two theories addressed the same phenomena new insight has emerged. We follow the dialogue from equilibrium…
A simple framework for reasoning under uncertainty and intervention is introduced. This is achieved in three steps. First, logic is restated in set-theoretic terms to obtain a framework for reasoning under certainty. Second, this framework…
Physics is a field of science that has traditionally used the scientific method to answer questions about why natural phenomena occur and to make testable models that explain the phenomena. Discovering equations, laws and principles that…
The rapid advancement of embodied intelligence and world models has intensified efforts to integrate physical laws into AI systems, yet physical perception and symbolic physics reasoning have developed along separate trajectories without a…
We propose new definitions of (causal) explanation, using structural equations to model counterfactuals. The definition is based on the notion of actual cause, as defined and motivated in a companion paper. Essentially, an explanation is a…
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…
The amount of published research in Physics Education Research (PER) shows, on one hand, an increasing interest in the design and development of high performance physics teaching strategies, and, on the other hand, it tries to understand…
Here I explore a novel no-collapse interpretation of quantum mechanics which combines aspects of two familiar and well-developed alternatives, Bohmian mechanics and the many-worlds interpretation. Despite reproducing the empirical…
Heat conduction is investigated on three levels: equilibrium, Fourier, and Cattaneo. The Fourier level is either the point of departure for investigating the approach to equilibrium or the final stage in the investigation of the approach…
Thermodynamics is commonly presented as a theory of macroscopic systems in stable equilibrium, built upon assumptions of extensivity and scaling with system size. In this paper, we present a universal formulation of the elementary…
This chapter argues that the general philosophy of science should learn metaphilosophical lessons from the case of metaphysical underdetermination, as it occurs in non-relativistic quantum mechanics. Section 2 presents the traditional…
Quantum mechanics has enjoyed a multitude of successes since its formulation in the early twentieth century. At the same time, it has generated puzzles that persist to this day. These puzzles have inspired a large literature in physics and…
Almost all theories of physics have expressed physical laws by means of differential equations. One can ask: why differential equations? What is special about them? This article addresses these questions and is presented as an inquiry-based…
In recent years, explainable machine learning methods have been very successful. Despite their success, most explainable machine learning methods are applied to black-box models without any domain knowledge. By incorporating domain…
Motivated by the rapid ascent of Large Language Models (LLMs) and debates about the extent to which they possess human-level qualities, we propose a framework for testing whether any agent (be it a machine or a human) understands a subject…
One goal of physics instruction is to have students learn to make physical meaning of specific mathematical ideas, concepts, and procedures in different physical settings. As part of research investigating student learning in statistical…
The ability to discover abstract physical concepts and understand how they work in the world through observing lies at the core of human intelligence. The acquisition of this ability is based on compositionally perceiving the environment in…
A general quantum theory encompassing Mechanics, Thermodynamics and irreversible dynamics is presented in two parts. The first part is concerned exclusively with the description of the states of any individual physical system. It is based…