Related papers: Pathological Science
We give a short non-technical introduction to the Ising model, and review some successes as well as challenges which have emerged from its study in probability and mathematical physics. This includes the infinite-volume theory of phase…
The author's opinion on the interpretation of quantum mechanics is further elucidated. Not only may quantum mechanics be a description of the sub-microscopic world that is profoundly different from what is often asserted, particularly…
In this essay, I argue that modern science is not the dichotomous pairing of theory and experiment that it is typically presented as, and I offer an alternative paradigm defined by its functions as a human endeavor. I also demonstrate how…
Remarks at the Irving Kaplansky Memorial about a collaboration during the early period of the renewal of contacts between mathematicians and theoretical physicists.
At time of writing, large language models (LLMs) are beginning to obtain the ability to design, execute, write up, and referee scientific projects on the data-science side of astrophysics. What implications does this have for our…
We demonstrate that the system of fine-tuning constraints for life is, in a sense, overdetermined: the a priori probability of its feasibility is extremely low, especially in the chemical sector. This entails that the structure of the…
Book Review for: "A New Kind of Science", by Stephen Wolfram (Wolfram Media, Inc. Champaign IL 2002).
In this lecture note, I discuss why many of us are expecting rich physics at the TeV scale, drawing analogies from the history of physics in the last century. Then I review some of the possible candidates of new physics at this energy…
Binary classification models which can assign probabilities to categories such as "the tissue is 75% likely to be tumorous" or "the chemical is 25% likely to be toxic" are well understood statistically, but their utility as an input to…
Ideas from quantum field theory and topology have proved remarkably fertile in suggesting new phenomena in the quantum physics of condensed matter. Here I'll supply some broad, unifying context, both conceptual and historical, for the…
What can be more fascinating than {\it experimental metaphysics}, to quote one of Abner Shimony's enlightening expressions? Bell inequalities are at the heart of the study of nonlocality. I present a list of open questions, organised in…
Henry Eyring was, and still is, a towering figure in science. Some aspects of his life and science, beginning in Mexico and continuing in Arizona, California, Wisconsin, Germany, Princeton, and finally Utah, are reviewed here. Eyring moved…
This article summarises the outstanding scientific career of Giorgio Parisi, who was awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics, with special emphasis on his contributions to the description of the equilibrium properties of disordered systems.
Anomalous transitions involving photons derived by many-body interaction of the form, $\partial_{\mu} G^{\mu}$, in the standard model are studied. This does not affect the equation of motion in the bulk, but makes wave functions modified,…
A 21st century view of the nature of science is presented. It attempts to show how a consistent description of science and scientific progress can be given. Science advances through a sequence of models with progressively greater predictive…
In a recent paper [1], it has been claimed that the outcomes of a quantum coin toss which is idealized as an infinite binary sequence is 1-random. We also defend the correctness of this claim and assert that the outcomes of quantum…
Several interdisciplinary areas have appeared at the interface between biological and physical sciences. In this work, we suggest a complex network-based methodology for analyzing the interrelationships between some of these…
In recent years, by theory and observation cosmology has advanced substantially. Parameters of the concordance or $\Lambda$CDM cosmological model are given with unprecedented precision ("precision cosmology"). On the other side, 95% of the…
Social epistemologists have argued that high risk, high reward science has an important role to play in scientific communities. Recently, though, it has also been argued that various scientific fields seem to be trending towards…
Nuclear Physics has had its ups and downs. However in recent years, bucked up by some new and often puzzling data, it has become a potentially very rich field. We review some of these exciting developments in a few important sectors of…