Related papers: Living in the Multiverse
This contribution to the concluding session at IAU Symposium 205 offered comments on some current controversies, including the scientific status of the ''multiverse'' concept and on the prospects for cosmology in the coming decade.
Edited proceedings of an interdisciplinary symposium on consciousness held at the University of Cambridge in January 1978. The purpose of the Cambridge conference was to encourage distinguished scientists to express their views on the…
This book is a philosopher's introduction to the idea that our universe is just one of many universes. I present and assess three versions of the idea: one version from philosophy, and two from physics. In short, they are: all the logically…
The current debate about a possible change of paradigm from a single universe to a multiverse scenario could have deep implications on our view of cosmology and of science in general. These implications therefore deserve to be analyzed from…
Hypothetical existence of other universes gives an opportunity not only to extend the scope of physics, but the scope of biology, SETI, and METI as well. Some steps of the development of alien life concept shall be briefly summarized, then…
These lectures on supersymmetry and extra dimensions are aimed at finishing undergraduate and beginning postgraduate students with a background in quantum field theory and group theory. Basic knowledge in general relativity might be…
I know better than to come between the experts here assembled and their research programs, so I confine these remarks to lessons to be drawn on the state of our subject from the histories of research in three Windows on the Universe:…
The notion that there are many "universes" with different properties is one answer to the question of "why is the universe so hospitable to life?" This notion also naturally follows from current ideas in eternal inflation and string/M…
We propose a novel definition of life in terms of which its emergence in the universe is expected, and its ever-creative open-ended evolution is entailed by no law. Living organisms are Kantian Wholes that achieve Catalytic Closure,…
Talk presented at the conference ``Historical and Philosophical Reflections on the Foundations of Quantum Field Theory,'' at Boston University, March 1996. It will be published in the proceedings of this conference.
This is the written version of a talk given in memory of Gunnar K\"{a}ll\'{e}n, at the Departments of Theoretical Physics, Physics, and Astronomy of Lund University on February 13, 2009. It will be published in a collection of the papers of…
This is neither a summary talk (too much for too short a talk) nor a conclusion (a gigantic work is in progress and we are not at the end of a particular phase), rather an overview of the field as reflected at this Conference.
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the various types of physical universe which could exist according to modern mathematical physics. The paper begins with an introduction that approaches the question from the viewpoint of ontic…
At the end of the five years of work in our GeoDiverCity program, we brought together a diversity of authors from different disciplines. Each person was invited to present an important question about the theories and models of urbanization.…
It is argued that all notions associated with the origin of life should be related with the participatory anthropic principle of Wheeler and must be extended into the realm of the multiverse. Also discussed is the notion that life can only…
The idea of a multiverse -- an ensemble of universes or universe domains -- has received increasing attention in cosmology, both as the outcome of the originating process that generated our own universe, and as an explanation for why our…
The idea of a multiverse -- an ensemble of universes -- has received increasing attention in cosmology, both as the outcome of the originating process that generated our own universe, and as an explanation for why our universe appears to be…
The actual existence of collections of universes -- multiverses -- is strongly suggested by leading approaches to quantum cosmology, and has been proposed earlier as an attractive way to explain the apparent fine-tuned character of our…
The multiverse view in set theory, introduced and argued for in this article, is the view that there are many distinct concepts of set, each instantiated in a corresponding set-theoretic universe. The universe view, in contrast, asserts…
This is the written version of an invited review talk for the 13 Feb 2004 AAAS Meeting in Seattle. The talk's goal is to present a philosophical view of extragalactic astronomy as it applies to the sub-field of galaxy evolution. The talk is…