物理学史与哲学

With the advent of quantum mechanics by Heisenberg in 1925 exactly a century ago, the quantization of the electromagnetic field became an important goal for our founding fathers, whom we are here to celebrate. It was realized very soon that…

This oral history interview provides Yakir Aharonov's perspective on the theoretical discovery of the Aharonov-Bohm effect in 1959, during his PhD studies in Bristol with David Bohm, the reception of the effect, the efforts to test it…

This paper reconstructs the derivations underlying the kinematical part of Einstein's 1905 special relativity paper, emphasizing their operational clarity and minimalist use of mathematics. Einstein employed modest tools-algebraic…

Today, data and information have become overabundant resources within a global network of machines that exchange signals at speeds approaching that of light. In this highly saturated environment, communication has emerged as the most…

In 1925, Ernest Ising published a paper analyzing a model proposed in 1920 by Wilhelm Lenz for ferromagnetism. The model is composed of constituent units that take only two states and interact only when they are neighbors. Ising showed that…

We apply recent ideas about complexity and randomness to the philosophy of laws and chances. We develop two ways to use algorithmic randomness to characterize probabilistic laws of nature. The first, a generative chance* law, employs a…

In 1962, Belarusian physicist A. P. Khapalyuk has published the paper [Doklady Akademii nauk BSSR, volume 6, issue 5, pages 301-304] devoted to the effect of resonant absorption of light in a layer of matter. This work can be considered as…

A room, a teacher and many friends.

The Carnot theory is unique among the theories of heat developed before the emergence of thermodynamics because it considers the relationship between heat and work. The theory is contained in Carnot's book published in 1824, which includes…

The von Neumann attitude on such a deep interpretational question as the role of a human observer in order for the quantum description of measurement to be consistent has been long misrepresented. The large majority of the subsequent…

There are long standing questions about the Big Bang What were its properties? Was there nothing before it? Was the universe always here? Many conceptual issues revolve around time. This paper gives a novel model based on McTaggarts…

This paper argues that the common identification of time with entropy is a category error. Entropy accounts for the arrow of time but not for time itself. Even in a maximally entropic universe the so called heat death temporal structure…

The scientific status of physical cosmology has been the subject of philosophical debate ever since detailed mathematical models of the Universe emerged from Einstein's general theory of relativity. Such debates have revolved around whether…

Scientific articles, for instance in the field of astrophysics, are often filled with a variety of images. In philosophical studies, these images are usually analyzed in terms of their function within the scientific argument presented in…

We suggest that the question of why is there something rather than nothing can be answered by the existence of two types of nothing. We propose that matter occurs at the boundaries of intersection of both nothings. This accords with the…

This paper explores the historical development of the theory of quantum mechanics between 1900 and 1927 by chronological examination of the foundational papers and ideas. Beginning with Planck's introduction of energy quantisation in…

A childhood observation of Thakur Anukulchandra that "one and one can only be two ones, not simply two" motivates a precise inquiry: what, exactly, is asserted when we pass from two concrete individuals to the numeral "2"? This paper does…

According to the Causal Principle, anything that begins to exist has a cause. In turn, various authors -- including Thomas Hobbes, Jonathan Edwards, and Arthur Prior -- have defended the thesis that, had the Causal Principle been false,…

The paper advances the hypothesis that the multi-field is a determinable, that is, a physical object characterized by indeterminate values with respect to some properties. The multi-field is a realist interpretation of the wave function in…

In previous publications, we have argued that a form of panprotopsychism based on quantum states and events offers a solution to the combination problem. This framework explains the emergence of complex phenomenal qualities and conscious…