Related papers: Comments on a recent item by Yu I Manin
Many widely different problems have a common mathematical structure wherein limited knowledge lead to ambiguity that can be captured conveniently using a concept of invisibility that requires the introduction of negative values for…
In this note some philosophical thoughts and observations about mathematics are expressed, arranged as challenges to some common claims.
We generalize, improve and unify theorems of Rumin, and Maassen--Uffink about classical entropies associated to quantum density matrices. These theorems refer to the classical entropies of the diagonals of a density matrix in two different…
Decisions about how the population of the United States should be divided into legislative districts have powerful and not fully understood effects on the outcomes of elections. The problem of understanding what we might mean by "fair…
Recently I posted a paper entitled "External observer reflections on QBism". As any external observable, I was not able to reflect some features of QBism properly. Therefore comments which I received from one of its creators, C. Fuchs, are…
Incompleteness theorems of Godel, Turing, Chaitin, and Algorithmic Information Theory have profound epistemological implications. Incompleteness limits our ability to ever understand every observable phenomenon in the universe.…
What would you do if you were asked to "add" knowledge? Would you say that "one plus one knowledge" is two "knowledges"? Less than that? More? Or something in between? Adding knowledge sounds strange, but it brings to the forefront…
Information is everywhere in nature which is very uncertain and unpredictable. But information, in itself, is a very ambiguous term. In this cursory write-up, we attempt to understand the formal meaning of information by quantifying…
Some thoughts are presented on the inter-relation between beauty and truth in science in general and theoretical physics in particular. Some conjectural procedures that can be used to create new ideas, concepts and results are illustrated…
I briefly consider the Kuhnian notion of "paradigm shifts" applied to the history of mathematics and argue that the succession and intergenerational continuity of mathematical thought was undeservedly neglected in the historical studies. To…
In this small note I try to summarize some observations about Euclid's remarkable role in mathematics and about the ambient philosophy.
This paper is concerned with a dialogue between Rabindranath Tagore and Albert Einstein, where Tagore argued that our knowledge is essentially human, while Einstein maintained that some kinds of knowledge are more objective. Arguments by…
This paper discusses, from a mathematician's point of view, the thesis formulated by Israel Gelfand, one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century, and one of the pioneers of mathematical biology: "There is only one thing which is…
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.
Remarks on mathematical proof and the practice of mathematics.
Deep learning has sparked a network of mutual interactions between different disciplines and AI. Naturally, each discipline focuses and interprets the workings of deep learning in different ways. This diversity of perspectives on deep…
Entropy concept was introduced by Clausius 160 years ago, and has been continually enriched, developed and interpreted by the researchers in many different scientific disciplines ever since. Thermodynamics and other scientific disciplines…
People learn whenever and wherever possible, and whatever they like or encounter--Mathematics, Drama, Art, Languages, Physics, Philosophy, and so on. With the bursting of knowledge, evaluation of one's understanding of conceptual knowledge…
This article explores the overall geometric manner in which human beings make sense of the world around them by means of their physical theories; in particular, in what are nowadays called pregeometric pictures of Nature. In these, the…
A perplexing problem in understanding physical reality is why the universe seems comprehensible, and correspondingly why there should exist physical systems capable of comprehending it. In this essay I explore the possibility that rather…