Related papers: Classical Thought in Newton's General Scholium
What can relics of the past tell us about the thoughts and beliefs of the people who invented and used them? Recent collaborations at the frontier of archaeology, anthropology, and cognitive science are culminating in speculative but…
A qualitatively new, much more liberal and efficient organisation of science is proposed and justified, in connection with growing debate about further role and development of fundamental science. Although the key ideas can be explained…
The fact that mass has an effect on surrounding space is the first essential element of general relativity. This paper unifies this mass/space distinction of general relativity with Newtonian gravity at a subatomic scale and with reported…
In this paper I address the difference between knowledge-inquiry and wisdom-inquiry (concepts introduced by N. Maxwell) in nuclear physics education, specifically in senior-level textbooks for first-degree physics students. Following on…
In this small note I try to summarize some observations about Euclid's remarkable role in mathematics and about the ambient philosophy.
The launch of Google Scholar (GS) marked the beginning of a revolution in the scientific information market. This search engine, unlike traditional databases, automatically indexes information from the academic web. Its ease of use,…
There is no escape from the expansion of information, so that structuring and locating meaningful knowledge becomes ever more difficult. The question of how to order our knowledge is as old as the systematic acquisition, circulation, and…
In the initial stages of its development, atomic theory had to bypass the laws of classical electromagnetism in an ad hoc manner in order to explain the stability of atoms. In quantum mechanics, however, the classical theory may find again…
Despite ongoing calls for inclusive and culturally responsive pedagogy in computing education, the teaching of algorithms remains largely decontextualized. Foundational computer science courses often present algorithmic thinking as purely…
I discuss a memorandum entitled " A True state of the Case and Controversy between Sir Isaak Newton and Dr. Robert Hooke as the Priority of that Noble Hypothesis of motion of ye Planets about ye Sun as their Centers", where Hooke summarizes…
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…
In 2007 an international conference engaged a reflection on the present conditions for sciences and scientific practice, to initiate a dialogue between science, philosophy, epistemology and sociology. Starting from many examples taken from…
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…
Quantum computers take advantage of interfering quantum alternatives in order to handle problems that might be too time consuming with algorithms based on classical logic. Developing quantum computers requires new ways of thinking beyond…
Reasoning, a fundamental cognitive process integral to human intelligence, has garnered substantial interest within artificial intelligence. Notably, recent studies have revealed that chain-of-thought prompting significantly enhances LLM's…
We discuss some outstanding open questions regarding the validity and uniqueness of the standard second order Newton-Einstein classical gravitational theory. On the observational side we discuss the degree to which the realm of validity of…
According to the so-called ``Quantum Darwinist'' approach, the emergence of ``classical islands'' from a quantum background is assumed to obey a (selection) principle of maximal information. We illustrate this idea by considering the…
In this article, we present a description of the \textit{apparatus} employed by Henry Cavendish, which in turn is actually a compendium of 17 complex experiments, to try to experimentally measure the universal gravitation constant,…
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…
According to Aristotle "time is the number of change with respect to the before and after". That's certainly a vague concept, but at the same time it's both simple and satisfying from a philosophical point of view: things do not change…