Related papers: The physicists philosophy of physics
A tradition handed down among physicists maintains that classical physics is a perfectly deterministic theory capable of predicting the future with absolute certainty, independently of any interpretations. It also tells that it was quantum…
What science does, what science could do, and how to make science work? If we want to know the answers to these questions, we need to be able to uncover the mechanisms of science, going beyond metrics that are easily collectible and…
We analyse the implications of the closure of the physical for experiments in the scientific study of consciousness when all the details are considered, especially how measurement results relate to physical events. It turns out that the…
In this contribution to the proceedings of the 182nd Nobel Symposium, I reflect on the concept of "discovery" as it is used by physicists and astronomers. In particular, I comment on how the scientific community distinguishes discoveries…
This essay provides a short introduction to the ideas and potential implications of quantum physics for scholars in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. Quantum-inspired ideas pepper current discourse in all of these fields, in ways…
The present discussion concerning certain fundamental physical theories (such as string theory and multiverse cosmology) has reopened the demarcation problem between science and non-science. While parts of the physics community see the…
The human mind is endowed with innate primordial perceptions such as space, distance, motion, change, flow of time, matter. The field of cognitive science argues that the abstract concepts of mathematics are not Platonic, but are built in…
Why is the universe comprehensible? How is it that we can come to know its regularities well-enough to exploit them for our own gain? In this essay I argue that the nature of our comprehension lies in the mutually agreed upon methodology we…
The end (for human scientists) is nigh? The posit of this discourse is that the majority, if not all, scientific research will eventually be undertaken by one, or a number of, weak artificial intelligences.
For a century, quantum theorists have been reading the mathematical entrails of quantum mechanics (QM) to divine the nature of quantum reality. But to little avail. In this paper a different approach is taken, namely to identify and explain…
Modern fundamental physics poses new questions for philosophy, which, as it seems to us, have not yet received appropriate attention from philosophers of science. This paper formulates a number of such questions in order to present them to…
In order to obtain a well defined quantum gravity we define the spacetime in relation to the "phenomenology" of the physical interactions; however we shall to speculate with this "in General". Besides, we comment the reasons that give to…
Is the universe digital or analog? In this essay I argue that both classical and quantum physics include limits that prevent us from definitively answering that question. That quantum physics does so is no surprise. That classical physics…
Learning to think like a physicist (LTP) is often cited as a central goal of graduate physics education, yet what this means in practice and the extent to which physics graduate education prepares students to develop LTP and view LTP as…
It has been shown that the criticism of Pauli as well as of Susskind and Glogover may be avoided if the standard quantum-mechanical mathematical model has been suitably extended. There is not more any reason for Einstein's citicism, either,…
The interpretation of quantum mechanics has been discussed since this theme first was brought up by Einstein and Bohr. This article describes a proposal for a new foundation of quantum theory, partly drawing upon ideas from statistical…
Several physical concepts, including the concept of time, are clarified herein by taking into account existing experimental data. In addition, the missing links among these physical concepts are established. This allows us to take another…
Econophysics is a new area developed recently by the cooperation between economists, mathematicians and physicists. It's not a tool to predict future prices of stocks and exchange rates. It applies idea, method and models in Statistical…
A non-technical argument is presented that there is a link between the mind and the physical world in modern physics. Special relativity, general relativity, quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, and other areas of physics are explored.…
Cosmoparticle physics is the natural result of development of mutual relationship between cosmology and particle physics. Its prospects offer the way to study the theory of everything and the true history of the Universe, based on it, in…