Related papers: Nikola Tesla's Inventions -- Myth or Reality?
The nature of the scientific method is controversial with claims that a single scientific method does not even exist. However the scientific method does exist. It is the building of logical and self consistent models to describe nature. The…
The concept of fact has a history. Over the past centuries, physicists have appropriated it in various ways. In this article, we compare Ernst Mach and Albert Einstein's interpretations of the concept. Mach, like most nineteenth-century…
Following a recent idea, to measure fame by the number of \Google hits found in a search on the WWW, we study the relation between fame (\Google hits) and merit (number of papers posted on an electronic archive) for a random group of…
Mathematics and its relation to the physical universe have been the topic of speculation since the days of Pythagoras. Several different views of the nature of mathematics have been considered: Realism - mathematics exists and is…
Steven Weinberg was a giant of late 20th Century physics on whose shoulders we stand while groping for the science of the 21st Century. This article provides a too-brief summary of a selection of his many achievements -- eight decades of…
I will report below on a few examples of raving and insane (or maybe utterly genial) sentences that can be found in famous and otherwise admirable books of physics, because I genuinely believe it is amusing.
Today, February 11, is the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, the perfect day to remember Mileva Mari\'{c} Einstein, a brilliant but largely unknown scientist. While her husband, Albert Einstein is celebrated as perhaps the…
Ellipsoids possess several beautiful properties associated with classical potential theory. Some of them are well known, and some have been forgotten. In this article we hope to bring a few of the "lost" pieces of classical mathematics back…
The full story of the Stern-Gerlach experiment and its reception, interpretation and final understanding has many unexpected surprises. Here, we review the history and the context of the proposal, the experiment, and the subsequent story of…
This article examines the proportion of technical knowledge that is eventually patented and discusses implications for innovation. Drawing from economic theory and information science, the study considers a continuum from raw data to…
James Chadwick is known for his discovery of the neutron. Many of his earlier findings and ideas in the context of weak and strong nuclear forces are much less known. This biographical sketch attempts to highlight the achievements of a…
Professor Sir Karl Popper (1902-1994) was one of the most influential philosophers of science of the twentieth century, best known for his doctrine of falsifiability. His axiomatic formulation of probability, however, is unknown to current…
Metaphysics is the science of being and asks the question ``What really exists?'' The answer to this question has been sought for by mankind since the beginning of recorded time. In the past 2500 years there have been many answers to this…
A sketch of some of the fundamental notions related to the nature of knowledge is offered, with special focus on the role of mathematics and my own opinions. No single idea exposed here is entirely original; indeed, this topic has been…
Some thoughts are presented on the inter-relation between beauty and truth in science in general and theoretical physics in particular. Some conjectural procedures that can be used to create new ideas, concepts and results are illustrated…
Philosophers have spilled much ink over the discovery of ideas in the classical 'context of discovery'. However, there has been little engagement with the question of what constitutes a discovery of 'things in the world'. A much-overlooked…
Innovation in Information and Communication Technology has become one of the key economic drivers of our technology dependent world. In popular notion, the tech industry or how ICT is often known has become synonymous to all technologies…
This paper is concerned with a dialogue between Rabindranath Tagore and Albert Einstein, where Tagore argued that our knowledge is essentially human, while Einstein maintained that some kinds of knowledge are more objective. Arguments by…
Are symmetries discovered or rather invented by humans ? The stand you may take firmly here reveals a lot of your epistemological position. Conversely, the arguments you may forge for answering to this question, or to one of its numerous…
The cultural infrastructure that let Galileo invent the modern physics is discussed. The key new element of modern physics was firm belief in its fundamental structure, which could be expressed in the double postulate: 1) There are…