Related papers: Idealizations and analogies
The name Ising has come to stand not only for a specific model, but for an entire universality class - arguably the most important such class - in the theory of critical phenomena. I review several examples, both in and out of equilibrium,…
Analogies have had and continue to have an important role in the development of theoretical physics. They may start from similarities of physical concepts followed by similarities in the mathematical formalization or it may be a purely…
There is a question of whether de-idealization is needed for justified use of -- for 'checking' -- idealizations. We argue that the standard philosophical account of de-idealization has become too idealized, but that this does not preclude…
Our aim in this set of lectures is to give an introduction to critical phenomena that emphasizes the emergence of and the role played by diverging length-scales. It is now accepted that renormalization group gives the basic understanding of…
We aim here to show that reductionism and emergence play a complementary role in understanding natural processes and in the dynamics of science explanation. In particular, we will show that the renormalization group - one of the most…
The reader surely knows what particles physics is about: finding building blocks of nature that appear elementary at a given time and study their interactions - so why in the world this essay? The problem is how to arrive at a fundamental…
Critical phenomena in real fluids demonstrate a combination of universal features caused by the divergence of long-range fluctuations of density and nonuniversal (system-dependent) features associated with specific intermolecular…
Symmetries and isomorphisms play similar conceptual roles when we consider how models represent physical situations, but they are formally distinct, as two models related by symmetries are not typically isomorphic. I offer a rigorous…
Standard statistical theory has arguably proved to be unsuitable as a basis for constructing a satisfactory completely general framework for performing statistical inference. For example, frequentist theory has never come close to providing…
We argue that Anton Zeilinger's "foundational conceptual principle" for quantum mechanics according to which an elementary system carries one bit of information is an idealistic principle, which should be replaced by a realistic principle…
We investigate the structure common to causal theories that attempt to explain a (part of) the world. Causality implies conservation of identity, itself a far from simple notion. It imposes strong demands on the universalizing power of the…
We argue that Anton Zeilinger's "foundational conceptual principle" for quantum mechanics according to which an elementary system carries one bit of information is an idealistic principle, which should be replaced by a realistic principle…
We begin by surveying the historical positions in different attempts to understand the material world since the rise of modern science, with specific focus on the role of Cartesian primary qualities in explanatory conceptualisation.…
Normalization is ubiquitous in economics, and a growing literature shows that ``normalizations'' can matter for interpretation, counterfactual analysis, misspecification, and inference. This paper provides a general framework for these…
The perturbative treatment of realistic quantum field theories, such as quantum electrodynamics, requires the use of mathematical idealizations in the approximation series for scattering amplitudes. Such mathematical idealisations are…
The phenomenological universalities (PU) are extended to include time-depended quantum oscillatory phenomena, coherence and supersymmetry. It will be proved that this approach generates minimum uncertainty coherent states of time-dependent…
In statistical physics, if we successively divide an equilibrium system into two parts, we will face a situation that, within a certain length $\xi$, the physics of a subsystem is no longer the same as the original system. Then the…
Precise rules are developed in order to formalize the reasoning processes involved in standard non-relativistic quantum mechanics, with the help of analogies from classical physics. A classical or quantum description of a mechanical system…
We study a long-recognised but under-appreciated symmetry called "dynamical similarity" and illustrate its relevance to many important conceptual problems in fundamental physics. Dynamical similarities are general transformations of a…
We present several philosophical ideas emerging from the studies of complex systems. We make a brief introduction to the basic concepts of complex systems, for then defining "abstraction levels". These are useful for representing…