Related papers: Aristotle: The first encyclopedist
Some basic sociophysical notions are described by a physicist, tentatively for a sociologically-oriented reader.
In his book `Physics and Philosophy', Heisenberg suggested that the quantum world is one of ``potentialities or possibilities'' and that the classical realm is one of ``things or facts''. After ascertaining that his categories most…
Free translation of the original abstract in Spanish: Some of the most relevant milestones due to, or instigated by, mathematicians concerning the creation, development and advances of Cosmology as a scientific discipline are presented and…
Physical laws are a set of rules in the relationship between observations made by the experimenter. All these observations are made through a mechanism that links the external world to the experimenter's awareness, a mechanism which is not…
Newton introduced the concept of mass in his {\it Principia} and gave an intuitive explanation for what it meant. Centuries have passed and physicists as well as philosophers still argue over its meaning. Three types of mass are generally…
We review the life and remarkable contributions to Physics of Gregor Wentzel.
In De Impressionibus Elementorum, a treatise written by Grosseteste shortly after 1220, we can find a discussion of some phenomena involving the four classical elements (air, water, fire and earth), in the framework of an Aristotelian…
We discuss the nature and a general formulation of the relativity principle and we show that it can be justified starting from a strictly operational point of view. We give some remark on the connection with the spacetime symmetry groups.…
Aristotelian assertoric syllogistic, which is currently of growing interest, has attracted the attention of the founders of modern logic, who approached it in several (semantical and syntactical) ways. Further approaches were introduced…
Classical physics is generally regarded as deterministic, as opposed to quantum mechanics that is considered the first theory to have introduced genuine indeterminism into physics. We challenge this view by arguing that the alleged…
Aristotle's discussions on modal syllogistic have often been viewed as error-prone and have garnered significant attention in the literature due to historical and philosophical interests. However, from a contemporary standpoint, they also…
Classical, Quantum, Relativistic and Statistical: the four branches of mechanics. However, the Quattro Donna of Physics disagree even about the entities that are supposed to be fundamental, such as space, matter and time. In order to search…
In glaring contrast to its indisputable century-old experimental success, the ultimate objects and meaning of quantum physics remain a matter of vigorous debate among physicists and philosophers of science. This article attempts to shed new…
Stirling Colgate was a remarkably imaginative physicist, an independent thinker with a wide breadth of interests and contagious enthusiasm, a born leader with enduring drive to attack fundamental problems in science. Among his many…
The Hamiltonian defines the dynamical properties of the universe. Evidence from particle physics shows that there is a different version of the Hamiltonian for each direction of time. As there is no physical basis for the universe to be…
Plutarchus, circa 100 AD, in his early book on "astrophysics" --in which he exposed, in a sense, a general theory of gravitation-- wrote the noticeable passage: <<The Moon gets the guarantee of not falling down just from its motion and from…
This text tries to give an elementary introduction to the mathematical properties of infinite sets. The aim is to keep the approach as simple as possible. Advanced knowledge of mathematics is not necessary for a proper understanding, and…
Perhaps the most significant, if not the most important, achievements in chemistry and physics are the Periodic Table of the Elements in Chemistry and the Standard Model of Elementary Particles in Physics. A comparable achievement in…
Among the geniuses of mankind, Einstein was probably one of those who made more erroneous claims, and often changed his opinion during the years on important scientific subjects. However, it is important to bear in mind that his mistakes…
It seems natural to ask why the universe exists at all. Modern physics suggests that the universe can exist all by itself as a self-contained system, without anything external to create or sustain it. But there might not be an absolute…