Related papers: Kant's Copernican Revolution
Founding our analysis on the Geneva-Brussels approach to the foundations of physics, we provide a clarification and classification of the key concept of observation. An entity can be observed with or without a scope. In the second case, the…
Metaphysics is the science of being and asks the question ``What really exists?'' The answer to this question has been sought for by mankind since the beginning of recorded time. In the past 2500 years there have been many answers to this…
We discuss a number of comments on quant-ph/9801061, and propose to introduce the concept of 'Causal Indistinguishability'. The incompatibility between Quantum Mechanics and Nonlocal Causality appears to be unavoidable: upholding of Quantum…
A particular science is not only defined by its object of study, but also by the point of view and method under which it considers that same object. Taking space and time as an illustrative example, our main aim here is to bring out an…
Human beings do not observe the world from the outside, but rather are fully embedded in it. The sciences, however, often give the observer both a "god's eye" perspective and substantial a~priori knowledge. Motivated by W. Ross Ashby's…
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…
At present many of the endeavours in physics are made to recognize in quantum substance classical reality, time, subjectivity, consciousness and many other physical and nonphysical features. The purpose of these remarks is to draw attention…
This paper presents an information-theoretic view of how an observer within a quantum system will perceive his world. It is argued that because of the indistinguishability of quantum particles, a coherent state will appear to an observer…
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…
Beginning with the principle that a closed mechanical composite system is timeless, time can be defined by the regular changes in a suitable position coordinate (clock) in the observing part, when one part of the closed composite observes…
In both quantum mechanics and relativity theory, the concept of the observer plays a critical role. However, there is no consensus on the definition of observer in these theories. Following Einstein's thought experiments, one could ask:…
The concept of indistinguishable particles in quantum theory is fundamental to questions of ontology. All ordinary matter is made of electrons, protons, neutrons, and photons and they are all indistinguishable particles. Yet the concept…
The traditional optical concept for the object does not provide an experimental feasibility to speak for itself, due to the fact that no measuring instrument catches up with the fluctuation of light fields. Using the theory of coherence, we…
A proposal is made for a fundamental theory, in which the history of the universe is constituted of diverse views of itself. Views are attributes of events, and the theory's only be-ables; they comprise information about energy and momentum…
We analyse the wave function collapse as seem by two distinct observers (with identical detectors) in relative motion. Imposing that the measurement process demands information transfer from the system to the detectors, we note that…
We propose a reformulation of quantum mechanics in which the distinction between definite and indefinite becomes the fundamental primitive. Inspired by suggestions of Heisenberg, Schrodinger and Dyson that the past can't be described in…
It is argued that Feynman's rules for evaluating probabilities, combined with von Neumann's principle of psycho-physical parallelism, help avoid inconsistencies, often associated with quantum theory. The former allows one to assign…
Recent advances in semiclassical gravity, both in our understanding of the gravitational path integral and the algebraic structure of a gravitating subregion, rely on the presence of an observer to obtain a nontrivial Hilbert space for…
Quantum cosmology offers a unique stage to address questions of time related to its underlying (and perhaps truly quantum dynamical) meaning as well as its origin. Some of these issues can be analyzed with a general scheme of quantum…
After a brief introduction to issues that plague the realization of a theory of quantum gravity, I suggest that the main one concerns a quantization of the principle of relative simultaneity. This leads me to a distinction between time and…