Related papers: Classical Thought in Newton's General Scholium
One might think that, once we know something is computable, how efficiently it can be computed is a practical question with little further philosophical importance. In this essay, I offer a detailed case that one would be wrong. In…
Defining the entropy of classical particles raises a number of paradoxes and ambiguities, some of which have been known for over a century. Several, such as Gibbs' paradox, involve the fact that classical particles are distinguishable, and…
Tafazzul Husain Khan (1727?--1800?), who began his career in the court of Awadh, spent the last two decades of his life as a trusted ally of the East India Company. What set him apart from other court officials was not so much his…
Classical physics has enabled the acquisition of significant knowledge of the physical properties of nature on a standard macroscopic scale. These achievements were driven by use of the causal ontological approach (proposed originally by…
In 1760 James Macpherson published the first volume of a series of epic poems which he claimed to have translated into English from ancient Scottish-Gaelic sources. The poems, which purported to have been composed by a third-century bard…
This article presents a brief review of some historical and philosophical aspects of Einstein's 1917 paper 'Cosmological Considerations in the General Theory of Relativity', a landmark work that denoted the starting point of modern…
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…
In different passages of his dialogues, Plato showed deep mathematically-based physical insights. Regrettably most readers overlooked the respective statements, or they utterly did not understand those hints since they were full of…
No woman of science has lived a more controversial life nor possessed a most contrasting character than Gabrielle Emilie Le Tonnelier, Marquise du Chatelet. One one hand, she was a woman of great intelligence, a philosopher of science, a…
Newton in his Principia gives an ingenious generalization of the Hellenistic theory of ratios and inspired experimentally gives a tensor-like definition of multiplication of quantities measured with his ratios. An extraordinary feature of…
Albert Einstein's practice in physics and his philosophical positions gradually reoriented themselves from more empiricist towards rationalist viewpoints. This change accompanied his turn towards unified field theory and different…
This study use some philological and historical means in order to understand Fermat's way of thinking.
Bibliographic data is a rich source of information that goes beyond the use cases of location and citation -- it also encodes both cultural and technological context. For most of its existence, the scholarly record has changed slowly and…
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…
Abner Shimony was an exceptional human being and a remarkably lucid and penetrating thinker whose work centered on some of the most significant physical and philosophical questions of his era at their nexus. He approached these questions…
Quantum computing exposes the brilliance of quantum mechanics through computer science and, as such, gives oneself a marvelous and exhilarating journey to go through. This article leads along that journey with a historical and current…
While similarities do naturally exist between tao and other philosophical systems, for the specific case of Democritus we can argue also the chronological parallels, the parallels in the posterior development (alchemy and mathematics) and…
The term complexity derives etymologically from the Latin plexus, which means interwoven. Intuitively, this implies that something complex is composed by elements that are difficult to separate. This difficulty arises from the relevant…
This essay considers the special character of mathematical reasoning, and draws on observations from interactive theorem proving and the history of mathematics to clarify the nature of formal and informal mathematical language. It proposes…
The book "A Course in Constructive Algebra" (1988) shows the way of understanding classical basic algebra in a constructive style similar to Bishop's Constructive Mathematics. Classical theorems are revisited, with a new flavour, and become…