Related papers: Duality : A Bridge Between Physics And Philosophy?
We discuss some methodological aspects of the relation between physics and metaphysics by dealing specifically with the case of non-relativistic quantum mechanics. Our main claim is that current attempts to productively integrate quantum…
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…
Cosmological perturbation equations derived from low-energy effective actions are shown to be invariant under a duality transformation reminiscent of electric-magnetic, strong-weak coupling, S-duality. A manifestly duality-invariant…
The relationship between classical and quantum theory is of central importance to the philosophy of physics, and any interpretation of quantum mechanics has to clarify it. Our discussion of this relationship is partly historical and…
The fundamental physical theories that interpret and explain behaviour of matter in nature are dependent on several unobservables and insensibles in their construction. While a rigorous natural philosophy cannot take them for granted, there…
Quantum mechanics led to spectacular technological developments, discovery of new constituents of matter and new materials. However there is still no consensus on its interpretation and limitations. Some scientists and scientific writers…
I provide a critical commentary regarding the attitude of the logician and the philosopher towards the physicist and physics. The commentary is intended to showcase how a general change in attitude towards making scientific inquiries can be…
The wave-particle duality is a mind-body one. In the real 3d-space there exists only the particle; the wave exists in its consciousness, as well as the reflection of the whole world. If there are many particles, their distribution in…
A system's apparent simplicity depends on whether it is represented classically or quantally. This is not so surprising, as classical and quantum physics are descriptive frameworks built on different assumptions that capture, emphasize, and…
Quantum physics and biology have long been regarded as unrelated disciplines, describing nature at the inanimate microlevel on the one hand and living species on the other hand. Over the last decades the life sciences have succeeded in…
In this talk I review a series of recent conceptual developments at the interface of the quantum and gravitational realms. Wherever possible, I comment on the possibility to probe the interface experimentally. It is concluded that the…
We analyze the notion that physical theories are quantitative and testable by observations in experiments. This leads us to propose a new, Bayesian, interpretation of probabilities in physics that unifies their current use in classical…
The job of a physicist is to describe Nature. General features, hypotheses and theories help to describe physics phenomena at a more abstract, fundamental level, and are sometimes tacitly assigned some sort of real existence; doing so…
The landscape of causal relations that can hold among a set of systems in quantum theory is richer than in classical physics. In particular, a pair of time-ordered systems can be related as cause and effect or as the effects of a common…
Gauge theory, which is the basis of all particle physics, is itself based on a few fundamental concepts, the consequences of which are often as beautiful as they are deep. In this short lecture course I shall try to give an introduction to…
Physical quantities and physical dimensions are among the first concepts encountered by students in their undergraduate career. In this pedagogical review, I will start from these concepts and, using the powerful tool of dimensional…
One of the most important problems in Physics is how to reconcile Quantum Mechanics with General Relativity. Some authors have suggested that this may be realized at the expense of having to drop the quantum formalism in favor of a more…
This paper traces an intellectual journey or \textit{Way} (in the sense of a Tao) that starts with some unfinished work of Gian-Carlo Rota on making a logic of equivalence relations or partitions. Rota understood the category-theoretic…
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…
An analysis of the path-integral approach to quantum theory motivates the hypothesis that two experiments with the same classical action should have dual ontological descriptions. If correct, this hypothesis would not only constrain…