Related papers: Eclectic Notes on Uncertainty, Information, and Cl…
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…
General characterization of physical measurements is discussed within the framework of a classical information theory. Uncertainty relation for simultaneous measurements of two physical observables is defined in this framework for…
A suitable unified statistical formulation of quantum and classical mechanics in a *-algebraic setting leads us to conclude that information itself is noncommutative in quantum mechanics. Specifically we refer here to an observer's…
We review of the interface between (theoretical) physics and information for non-experts. The origin of information as related to the notion of entropy is described, first in the context of thermodynamics then in the context of statistical…
I explain in what sense the structure of space and time is probably vague or indefinite, a notion I define. This leads to the mathematical representation of location in space and time by a vague interval. From this, a principle of…
These lectures deal with the problem of inductive inference, that is, the problem of reasoning under conditions of incomplete information. Is there a general method for handling uncertainty? Or, at least, are there rules that could in…
We present a theory of information expressed solely in terms of which transformations of physical systems are possible and which are impossible - i.e. in constructor-theoretic terms. Although it includes conjectured laws of physics that are…
Does information play a significant role in the foundations of physics? Information is the abstraction that allows us to refer to the states of systems when we choose to ignore the systems themselves. This is only possible in very…
A source of unpredictability is equivalent to a source of information: unpredictability means not knowing which of a set of alternatives is the actual one; determining the actual alternative yields information. The degree of…
This work is a discussion on the concept of information. We define here information as an abstraction that is able to be copied. We consider the connection between the process of copying information in quantum systems and the emergence of…
Despite the wide usage of information as a concept in science, we have yet to develop a clear & concise scientific definition. This paper is aimed at laying the foundations for a new theory concerning the mechanics of information alongside…
Information is a precise concept that can be defined mathematically, but its relationship to what we call "knowledge" is not always made clear. Furthermore, the concepts "entropy" and "information", while deeply related, are distinct and…
Quantum uncertainty is described here in two guises: indeterminacy with its concomitant indeterminism of measurement outcomes, and fuzziness, or unsharpness. Both features were long seen as obstructions of experimental possibilities that…
Classical physics is generally regarded as deterministic, as opposed to quantum mechanics that is considered the first theory to have introduced genuine indeterminism into physics. We challenge this view by arguing that the alleged…
In recent years there has been a considerable increase in the publishing of textbooks and monographs covering what was formerly known as random or irregular deterministic motion, now named by the more fashionable term of deterministic…
Dynamics, the study of change, is normally the subject of mechanics. Whether the chosen mechanics is ``fundamental'' and deterministic or ``phenomenological'' and stochastic, all changes are described relative to an external time. Here we…
The question of how irreversibility can emerge as a generic phenomena when the underlying mechanical theory is reversible has been a long-standing fundamental problem for both classical and quantum mechanics. We describe a mechanism for the…
A system's apparent simplicity depends on whether it is represented classically or quantally. This is not so surprising, as classical and quantum physics are descriptive frameworks built on different assumptions that capture, emphasize, and…
Some general considerations on the notion of entropy in physics are presented. An attempt is made to clarify the question of the differentiation between physical entropy (the Clausius-Boltzmann one) and quantities called entropies…
It is argued that the nature of probability is essentially informational rather than physical and that quantum mechanical predictions should be viewed as logical inferences made on the basis of the information content of a given…