Related papers: Naturalistic intuitionism for physics
The aim of this essay is to propose a conception of mathematics that is fully consonant with naturalism. By that I mean the hypothesis that everything that exists is part of the natural world, which makes up a unitary whole.
The paper defends the thesis that it's possible to maintain some conceptual preconditions of overcoming of relativistic intentions in modern philosophy of science ("there are no any general foundations in philosophy of science"). We found…
In recent publications in physics and mathematics, concerns have been raised about the use of real numbers to describe quantities in physics, and in particular about the usual assumption that physical quantities are infinitely precise. In…
This chapter sets the stage for the rest of the book by exploring the role of intuition as a tool to deepen understanding in Einsteinian physics. Drawing on examples from the history of general relativity, we argue that the development of…
Metaphysics is traditionally conceived as aiming at the truth -- indeed, the most fundamental truths about the most general features of reality. Philosophical naturalists, urging that philosophical claims be grounded on science, have often…
In Mathematical Thought and Its Objects, Charles Parsons argues that our knowledge of the iterability of functions on the natural numbers and of the validity of complete induction is not intuitive knowledge; Brouwer disagrees on both…
Physics is formulated in terms of timeless classical mathematics. A formulation on the basis of intuitionist mathematics, built on time-evolving processes, would offer a perspective that is closer to our experience of physical reality.
In the present essay we attempt to reconstruct Newtonian mechanics under the guidance of logical principles and of a constructive approach related to the genetic epistemology of J. Piaget and R. Garc\'ia \citep{piag89}. Instead of…
This paper has been withdrawn by the author. In this article I review W\"ust's recent handbook on mathematical physics from a philosophical standpoint. It emerges a structural approach to mathematics which evidences the utility of logic in…
A generalized view of Duality is offered as a bridge between physical sciences and the more abstract philosophical dimensions bordering on mysticism. To that end several examples of duality are first cited from from conventional physics…
We distinguish two different concepts of time that play a role in physics: \textit{geometric time} and \textit{creative time}. The former is the time of deterministic physics and merely parametrizes a given evolution. The latter is instead…
Most physics theories are deterministic, with the notable exception of quantum mechanics which, however, comes plagued by the so-called measurement problem. This state of affairs might well be due to the inability of standard mathematics to…
Two people may claim both to be naturalists, but have divergent conceptions of basic elements of the natural world which lead them to mean different things when they talk about laws of nature, or states, or the role of mathematics in…
We introduce an approach to the foundations of physics that is more in line with the foundations of mathematics. The idea is to examine current theories and find a set of starting physical assumptions that are sufficient to rederive them,…
This article aims at applying the approaches peculiar to analytic philosophy to the question about representation of the concept of time as a symbol which can reflect the bases of the modern natural sciences, social sciences and humanities.…
Many physicists, following Einstein, believe that the ultimate aim of theoretical physics is to find a unified theory of all interactions which would not depend on any free dimensionless constant, i.e., a dimensionless constant that is only…
The objective is a foundation of physics from the operationalization of its basic observables. We begin with classical and relativistic kinematics. Seizing on a programmatic proposal by Heinrich Hertz we arrive via quantification of…
Since I first became enthralled with physics as a teenager, I've been intrigued by the philosophical aspects of the discipline. As I approached the end of my career as an experimental physicist and observational astronomer (I'm now…
The analysis of theory-confirmation generally takes the deductive form: show that a theory in conjunction with physical data and auxiliary hypotheses yield a prediction about phenomena; verify the prediction; provide a quantitative measure…
A well-known topic within the philosophy of physics is the problem of fine-tuning: the fact that the universal constants seem to take non-arbitrary values in order for live to thrive in our Universe. In this paper we will talk about this…