Related papers: Determinism Beyond Time Evolution
The view that the laws of nature produce later states of the universe from earlier ones (prominently defended by Maudlin) faces difficult questions as to how the laws produce the future and whether that production is compatible with special…
Different aspects of relativity, mainly in a canonical formulation, relevant for the question "Is spacetime nothing more than a mathematical space (which describes the evolution in time of the ordinary three-dimensional world) or is it a…
Many formalisms combining ontology languages with uncertainty, usually in the form of probabilities, have been studied over the years. Most of these formalisms, however, assume that the probabilistic structure of the knowledge remains…
I present a discussion of some open issues in the philosophy of space-time theories. Emphasis is put on the ontological nature of space and time, the relation between determinism and predictability, the origin of irreversible processes in…
Supernovae searches have shown that a simple matter-dominated and decelerating universe should be ruled out. However a determination of the present deceleration parameter $q_0$ through a simple kinematical description is not exempt of…
At its core, the physics paradigm adopts a reductionist approach, aiming to understand fundamental phenomena by decomposing them into simpler, elementary processes. While this strategy has been tremendously successful in physics, it has…
Exponentiation makes the difference between the bit-size of this line and the number (<< 2^{300}) of particles in the known Universe. The expulsion of exponential time algorithms from Computer Theory in the 60's broke its umbilical cord…
It is possible to completely explain all aspects of quantum mechanics by expressing the relations between physical properties in terms of complex conditional probabilities (Phys. Rev. A 89, 042115(2014)). These fully deterministic…
Evolution is the fundamental physical process that gives rise to biological phenomena. Yet it is widely treated as a subset of population genetics, and thus its scope is artificially limited. As a result, the key issues of how rapidly…
In this paper, we discuss a potential agenda for future work in the theory of random sets and belief functions, touching upon a number of focal issues: the development of a fully-fledged theory of statistical reasoning with random sets,…
We describe a class of modified gravity theories that deform general relativity in a way that breaks time reversal invariance and, very mildly, locality. The algebra of constraints, local physical degrees of freedom, and their linearized…
Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection does not predict long-term progress or advancement, nor does it provide a useful way to define or understand these concepts. Nevertheless, the history of life is marked by major trends that…
If Nature allowed nonlocal correlations other than those predicted by quantum mechanics, would that contradict some physical principle? Various approaches have been put forward in the past two decades in an attempt to single out quantum…
The difficulty of explaining non-local correlations in a fixed causal structure sheds new light on the old debate on whether space and time are to be seen as fundamental. Refraining from assuming space-time as given a priori has a number of…
We describe the fundamental difference between the nature of problems in traditional physics and that of many problems arising today in systems biology and other complex settings. The difference hinges on the much larger number of a priori…
Time evolution of macroscopic systems is re-examined primarily through further analysis and extension of the equation of motion for the density matrix $\rho(t)$. Because $\rho$ contains both classical and quantum-mechanical probabilities it…
Bell's theorem shows that the reasonable relativistic causal principle known as "local causality" is not compatible with the predictions of quantum mechanics. It is not possible maintain a satisfying causal principle of this type while…
I argue that scientific determinism is not supported by facts, but results from the elegance of the mathematical language physicists use, in particular from the so-called real numbers and their infinite series of digits. Classical physics…
The notion that nature is subject to laws is exciting from many different viewpoints. This paper is based on the context of modern cosmology and presents a more philosophical discussion. It will list the significant interdisciplinary…
In this paper, it is shown why Lorentz Transformation implies the general case where observed events are not necessarily in the inertia frame of any observer but assumes a special scenario when determining the length contraction and time…