Related papers: From "Not Wrong" to (Maybe) Right
Currently it is widely accepted that the language of science is mathematics. This book explores an alternative idea where the future of science is based on the language of algorithms and programs. How such a language can actually be…
This is a talk concerning the irrationality of prominent physicists with regard to the foundations of quantum mechanics, delivered at a conference on the irrationality of the postmodern attack on science by nonscientists.
To provide an explanation of the evolution of scientific knowledge, I start from the assumption that knowledge is based on concepts, and propose that each concept about reality is affected by vagueness. This entails a paradox, which I term…
Some scientists take themselves and their work very seriously. However, there are plenty of cases of humour being combined with science. Here I review some examples from the broad fields of physics and astronomy, particularly focusing on…
Here we argue that the notion of falsifiability, a key concept in defining a valid scientific theory, can be quantified using Bayesian Model Selection, which is a standard tool in modern statistics. This relates falsifiability to the…
This paper argues that philosophers of science have before them an important new task that they urgently need to take up. It is to convince the scientific community to adopt and implement a new philosophy of science that does better justice…
Popper conceived an experiment whose analysis led to a result that he deemed absurd. Popper wrote that his reasoning was based on the Copenhagen interpretation and therefore invalidated the latter. Actually, Popper's argument involves…
We report an inconsistency found in probability theory (also referred to as measure-theoretic probability). For probability measures induced by real-valued random variables, we deduce an "equality" such that one side of the "equality" is a…
Both religion and science start with basic assumptions that cannot be proved but are taken on faith. Here I note that one basic assumption that is rather common in both enterprises is the assumption that in comparing different hypotheses…
I discuss examples of what Dr. Irving Langmuir, a Nobel prize winner in Chemistry, called "the science of things that aren't so." Some of his examples are reviewed and others from High Energy Physics are added. It is hoped that discussing…
We introduce a formal distinction between contradictions and disagreements in natural language texts, motivated by the need to formally reason about contradictory medical guidelines. This is a novel and potentially very useful distinction,…
Professor Sir Karl Popper (1902-1994) was one of the most influential philosophers of science of the twentieth century. However, in his most famous work he displays misunderstandings of science and mathematics at a basic level.
Data science is creating very exciting trends as well as significant controversy. A critical matter for the healthy development of data science in its early stages is to deeply understand the nature of data and data science, and to discuss…
Attacks on the P-value are nothing new, but the recent attacks are increasingly more serious. They come from more mainstream sources, with widening targets such as a call to retire the significance testing altogether. While well meaning, I…
This is a not-to-be-journal-published paper, aimed to serve as reference. It is a summary of the main ideas on the topic appearing in the title, and an opportunity to state correctly the main conjecture in the field.
We look at multiparticle production processes from the Information Theory point of view, both in its extensive and nonextensive versions. Examples of both symmetric (like pp or AA) and asymmetric (like pA) collisions are considered showing…
We establish an approach for consensus control of opinion dynamics by introducing a liar to the classical system. The liar's aim is to steer the population towards consensus at their goal opinion by showing 'apparent opinions', or 'lies',…
The Internet-based encyclopaedia Wikipedia has grown to become one of the most visited web-sites on the Internet. However, critics have questioned the quality of entries, and an empirical study has shown Wikipedia to contain errors in a…
Knowing the truth is rarely enough -- we also seek out reasons why the fact is true. While much is known about how we explain contingent truths, we understand less about how we explain facts, such as those in mathematics, that are true as a…
In this paper, we take a fresh look at three Popperian concepts: riskiness, falsifiability, and truthlikeness (or verisimilitude) of scientific hypotheses or theories. First, we make explicit the dimensions that underlie the notion of…