Related papers: Feyerabend and physics
In view of the sobering findings of science, theology and to a lesser degree metaphysics is confronted with a humiliating loss, and a need for reinterpretation, of allegories and narratives which have served as guidance to the perplexed for…
Recent developments in the mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics have brought the theory closer to that of classical probability and statistics. On the other hand, the unique character of quantum physics sets many of the questions…
Metaphysics is traditionally conceived as aiming at the truth -- indeed, the most fundamental truths about the most general features of reality. Philosophical naturalists, urging that philosophical claims be grounded on science, have often…
Gravitation has posed a puzzle and a problem for many decades. Attempts to unify it with other fundamental interactions have failed. These problems and puzzles have been underscored by the likes of Witten and Weinberg. We survey this and…
Quantum Mechanics, the physical theory describing the microworld, represents one of science's greatest triumphs. It lies at the root of all modern digital technologies and offers unparalleled correspondence between prediction and…
The reality of Bohm's intellectual journey is very different from what is often claimed by the proponents of "Bohmian Mechanics" and others as we will explain in this paper. He did not believe a mechanical explanation of quantum phenomena…
The rich body of physical theories defines the foundation of our understanding of the world. Its mathematical formulation is based on classical Aristotelian (binary) logic. In the philosophy of science the ambiguities, paradoxes, and the…
I reflect on some of the basic aspects of present day Beyond the Standard Model particle physics, focusing mostly on the issues of naturalness, in particular on the so-called hierarchy problem. To all of us, physics as natural science…
A tradition handed down among physicists maintains that classical physics is a perfectly deterministic theory capable of predicting the future with absolute certainty, independently of any interpretations. It also tells that it was quantum…
Physics has a bad press: it is seen by a majority of people as a boring discipline ever since their High School days. There is no glamour to it, just toil and pain, and for many who engaged in it, the end sight is often unemployment. Could…
Recent developments in elementary quantum mechanics have seen a number of extraordinary claims regarding quantum behaviour, and even questioning internal consistency of the theory. These are, we argue, different disguises of what Feynman…
A vast body of literature addresses the complex nature of science's reproducibility crisis. In contrast with this perceived complexity, some recent papers from the discipline of physics suggests that irreproducibility does not point to a…
Several examples are used to illustrate how we deal cavalierly with infinities and unphysical systems in physics. Upon examining these examples in the context of infinities from Cantor's theory of transfinite numbers, the only known…
The paper defends the thesis that it's possible to maintain some conceptual preconditions of overcoming of relativistic intentions in modern philosophy of science ("there are no any general foundations in philosophy of science"). We found…
Quantum physics has intrigued scientists and philosophers alike, because it challenges our notions of reality and locality--concepts that we have grown to rely on in our macroscopic world. It is an intriguing open question whether the…
Difficulties and discomfort with the interpretation of quantum mechanics are due to differences in language between it and classical physics. Analogies to The Special Theory of Relativity, which also required changes in the basic worldview…
Eugene Wigner famously argued for the "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics" for describing physics and other natural sciences in his 1960 essay. That essay has now led to some 55 years of (sometimes anguished) soul searching ---…
Can normal science-in the Kuhnian sense-add something substantial to the discussion about the measurement problem? Does an extended Wigner's-friend Gedankenexperiment illustrate new issues? Or a new quality of known issues? Are we led to…
Despite the extraordinary successes the two great bastions of $20^{th}$ century science (Quantum Theory and General Relativity) are troubled with serious conceptual and mathematical difficulties. As a result, further growth of fundamental…
The formalism of quantum mechanics produces spectacular results, but its rules, its parameters are empirical, either deduced from classical physics, or from experimental results rather than from the postulates. Thus, quantum mechanics is…