Related papers: Naturalistic intuitionism for physics
An attempt is made to give a heuristic explanation of the distinguished role of measurement in the quantum theory. We question the notion of "naive" reductionism by stressing the difference between an isolated quantum and classical object.…
In this course, I talk about the source of mathematical constructivism and its role in the future development of theoretical physics. I describe what physical constructivism is and why it is necessary for the penetration of exact methods of…
This is the first of a series of papers that we intend to publish about the epistemology of fundamental physics in its current state. One of the main objectives of these papers is to improve our understanding of fundamental physics (and…
The argument from naturalness is widely employed in contemporary quantum field theory. Essentially a formalized aesthetic criterion, it received a meaning in the debate on the Higgs mechanism, which goes beyond aesthetics. We follow the…
We briefly review the problem of Brownian motion and describe some intriguing facets. The problem is first treated in its original form as enunciated by Einstein, Langevin, and others. Then, utilizing the problem of Brownian motion as a…
Imagine a naive organism who does not know anything about the world. It can capture signals through its sensors and it can make actions. What kind of knowledge about the world is accessible to the organism? This situation is analog to that…
The paper attempts to convince that the orthodox interpretation of quantum mechanics does not contradict philosophical realism by throwing light onto certain properties of quantum systems that seem to have escaped attention as yet. The…
The time irreversibility problem is the dichotomy of the reversible microscopic dynamics and the irreversible macroscopic physics. This problem was considered by Boltzmann, Poincar\'e, Bogolyubov and many other authors and though some…
This note is answering an old questioning about the F\'{e}nyes-Nelson stochastic mechanics. The Brownian nature of the quantum fluctuations, which are associated to this mechanics, is deduced from Feynman's interpretation of the Heisenberg…
There is noticeable consensus among physicists and philosophers that only gauge-invariant quantities can be physically real. However, this insight that physical quantities must be gauge-invariant is not well-reflected in standard approaches…
Being mathematics a natural language to Mankind and to physics, it must be constantly adapted to our necessities and our natural perception. Then, mathematical concepts are not absolute to reality. Although mathematical theories are…
In the present study we attempt to incorporate the philosophical dialogue about physical reality into the instructional process of quantum mechanics. Taking into account that both scientific realism and constructivism represent, on the…
A goal of physics is to understand the greatest possible breadth of natural phenomena in terms of the most economical set of basic concepts. However, as the understanding of physics has developed historically, its pedagogy and language have…
While philosophy of science is the study of problems of knowledge concerning science in general, there also exists - or should exist - a '' philosophy in science'' directed at finding out in what ways our actual scientific knowledge may…
This is a pedagogical introduction to Brownian motion on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Einstein's 1905 paper on the subject. After briefly reviewing Einstein's work in its contemporary context, we pursue some lines of further…
It is a quite common view among people, that are not aware of the developments in modern physics, that it is part of human nature to substitute religious faith in places where there is no knowledge. Therefore, an increase in knowledge would…
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…
Philosophers now seem to agree that frequentism is an untenable strategy to explain the meaning of probabilities. Nevertheless, I want to revive frequentism, and I will do so by grounding probabilities on typicality in the same way as the…
Without a doubt many problems in physics arise as a consequence of our philosophical conception of the world. In this contribution however we endeavor to alleviate this scenario by putting forward a philosophical approach under which some…
Experiment plays a decisive role in physics. It is the single source of our understanding of nature. But, during the last century the main accent in theoretical physics has moved toward metaphysics. Some mathematicians/theoreticians try to…