Related papers: How do Laws Produce the Future?
The laws of nature have come a long way since the time of Newton: quantum mechanics and relativity have given us good reasons to take seriously the possibility of laws which may be non-local, atemporal, `all-at-once,' retrocausal, or in…
The notion that nature is subject to laws is exciting from many different viewpoints. This paper is based on the context of modern cosmology and presents a more philosophical discussion. It will list the significant interdisciplinary…
Most of the logical objections against the classical laws of motion, as they are usually presented in textbooks, centre on the fact that defining force in terms of mass and acceleration, the first two laws are mere assertions of concepts to…
It is a common belief that in any environment where life is possible, life will be generated. Here it is suggested that the cause for a spontaneous generation of complex systems is probability driven processes. Based on equilibrium…
In this and companion papers, we show that quantum field theories with gauge symmetries permit a broader class of classical dynamics than typically assumed. In this article, we show that the quantization of electromagnetism permits the…
Newton set the stage for our view of how science should be done. We remain in what I will call the `Newtonian Paradigm' in all of physics, including Newton, Einstein, and Schrodinger. As I will show shortly, Newton invented and bequeathed…
We couple the issue of evolution in the laws of physics with that of violations of energy conservation. We define evolution in terms of time variables canonically dual to ``constants'' (such as $\Lambda$, the Planck mass or the…
Newton's second law: "force = time-derivative of momentum", may also be defined for theories of gravitation endowing space-time with a curved metric. Thus, Einstein's assumption of a geodesic motion may be rewritten in that form, and it…
We investigate quantum effects in the evolution of general systems. For studying such temporal quantum phenomena, it is paramount to have a rigorous concept and profound understanding of the classical dynamics in such a system in the first…
It is demonstrated that energy conservation allows for a straight derivation of Newtonian mechanics without an apriori definition of the concept of work. Furthermore it is shown that energy must be depicted as a function of position and…
Microphysical laws are time reversible, but macrophysics, chemistry and biology are not. This chapter explores how this asymmetry (a classic example of a broken symmetry) arises due to the cosmological context, where a non-local Direction…
We establish the general conditions under which evolution in the laws of physics and matter creation or destruction are closely intertwined. They make use of global time variables canonically dual to the constants of Nature. Such times flow…
We address the question of why particular laws were selected for the universe, by proposing a mechanism for laws to evolve. Normally in physical theories, timeless laws act on time-evolving states. We propose that this is an approximation,…
In this paper of "The Epistemology of Contemporary Physics" series we investigate Newton's third law and discuss and analyze its epistemological significance from some aspects with special attention to its relation to the principle of…
The interface between quantum theory and gravity represents still uncharted territory. Recently, some works suggested promising alternative approaches aimed at witnessing quantum features to test the fundamental nature of gravity in…
Newtons Laws of Motion form the basis of classical mechanics, but misconceptions about their interrelationships persist in pedagogy. A prevalent misunderstanding is that Newtons First Law is a trivial consequence of the Second Law. This…
What is time? Why does it "flow" and why are we sure that it flows from past towards future? Why is there such a gigantic distinction between the Past of our world, which we believe to be fixed, and the Future, which we consider…
Physicists are increasingly beginning to take seriously the possibility of laws outside the traditional time-evolution paradigm; yet our understanding of determinism is still predicated on a forwards time-evolution picture, making it…
This work explores Boltzmann's time hypothesis, which associates the perceived direction of "time flow" with the second law of thermodynamics. We discuss mechanisms that can be responsible for the action of the second law, for directional…
A consistent classical and quantum relativistic mechanics can be constructed if Einstein's covariant time is considered as a dynamical variable. The evolution of a system is then parametrized by a universal invariant identified with…