物理学史与哲学

This paper defends an account of terrestrial analogue simulations in black hole physics as instances of inferences from material analogy in science (Hesse 1963). We outline the main verdicts and recommendations deriving from this analysis,…

The year 2024 marks two anniversaries: The 70th anniversary of CERN and the 50th anniversary of the $J/\Psi$ discovery. At this occasion I have been asked to give review talks on the significance of these anniversaries. This article is an…

This essay gives a short, informal account of the development of digital logic from the Pleistocene to the Manhattan Project, the introduction of reversible circuits, and Richard Feynman's allied proposal for quantum computing. We argue…

The manuscript New Theory of Sunspots was identified and attributed to the Jesuit astronomer and hydrographer from Marseille Esprit Pezenas (1692-1776) during the year 2002, during the systematic search for papers concerning him in the…

Hilary Putnam's biography and philosophical development reflect the history of Anglo-Saxon philosophy over the last 40 years. Putnam has influenced this history significantly for almost as long. In this introduction, the main aim is to…

1. Strong and weak notions of erasure are distinguished according to whether the single erasure procedure does or does not leave the environment in the same state independently of the pre-erasure state. 2. Purely thermodynamic…

This paper argues that we ought to conceive of the Dark Energy problem -- the question of how to account for observational data, naturally interpreted as accelerated expansion of the universe -- as a crisis of underdetermined…

Scientific principles can undergo various developments. While philosophers of science have acknowledged that such changes occur, there is no systematic account of the development of scientific principles. Here we propose a template for…

The apparent fine-tuning of several fundamental parameters that determine the properties of our Universe and make it hospitable to life is sometimes used as an argument for God from design. I review the concept of cosmic fine-tuning and…

Steven Weinberg was a giant of late 20th Century physics on whose shoulders we stand while groping for the science of the 21st Century. This article provides a too-brief summary of a selection of his many achievements -- eight decades of…

We evaluate the roles general relativistic assumptions play in simulations used in recent observations of black holes including LIGO-Virgo and the Event Horizon Telescope. In both experiments simulations play an ampliative role, enabling…

In commemoration of the fifth anniversary since Nino Boccara's departure, this article offers some personal recollections and provides insight into his life and accomplishments. Detailed bibliography of his works is included together with…

This essay is a two-step reflection on the question 'Which events (can be said to) occur in quantum phenomena?' The first step regiments the ontological category of "statistical phenomena" and studies the adequacy of "probabilistic event…

This work introduces Algorithmic Idealism a framework that reinterprets quantum mechanics as a computational process governed by algorithmic probability informational simplicity and utility optimization Reality is modeled as an…

The link between the de Broglie-Bohm interpretation and the hard problem of consciousness is investigated. We highlight that beables of the de Broglie-Bohm interpretation are not themselves qualia, but are intimately related to qualia. It…

A family of arguments for black hole evaporation relies on conservation laws, defined through symmetries represented by Killing vector fields which exist globally or asymptotically. However, these symmetries often rely on the idealizations…

In this work we employ the methods of archaeoastronomy to analyze the orientation, possibly astronomical, of numerous groups of chullpa funerary towers, mainly from the 12th to 16th centuries, located in the Lauca River valley of the…

The use of statistical methods to model gravitational systems is crucial to physics practice, but the extent to which thermodynamics and statistical mechanics genuinely apply to these systems is a contentious issue. This paper provides new…

We focus on three distinct lines of recent developments: edge modes and boundary charges in gravitational physics, relational dynamics in classical and quantum gravity, and quantum reference frames. We argue that these research directions…

In 1492, for the first time, an unknown ocean opened up before sailors: weeks of navigation and no idea how to pinpoint their location. Since ancient times, navigators had known how to determine latitude by using the North Star, but the…