物理学史与哲学

What is a physical theory? Although this intriguing question has been addressed from many different perspectives, some physicists and philosophers of physics have implicitly or explicitly embraced a philosophically-neutral definition of a…

We carry out a quantitative Bayesian analysis of the evolution of credences in low energy supersymmetry (SUSY) in light of the most relevant empirical data. The analysis is based on the assumption that observers apply principles of optimism…

Seventy-five years ago, Bernardo Dessau passed away. He had been the sole professor of Physics at the University of Perugia for thirty years. With this brief contribution we intend to repay a debt of gratitude, first of all because his…

This note focuses the problem of motivating the use of gauge symmetries (being the identity on the observables) from general principles, beyond their practical success, starting from global gauge symmetries and then by emphasizing the…

The distinction between pure states and mixed states is a kernel ingredient of what is considered to be the standard formulation of quantum mechanics and plays today a kernel role in foundational debates about the meaning of quantum…

In quantum foundations, there is growing interest in the program of reconstructing the quantum formalism from clear physical principles. These reconstructions are formulated in an operational framework, deriving the formalism from…

The uncertainty about the relationships between the star catalogue contained in the Almagest (books VII-VIII) and the catalogue of Hipparchus dates back to the origins of modern astronomy. The fact that Hipparchus' catalogue was lost and…

The program of reconstructing quantum theory based on information-theoretic principles enjoys much popularity in the foundations of physics. Surprisingly, this endeavor has only received very little attention in philosophy. Here I argue…

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…

In this article I discuss the fragments of Hipparchus' star catalogue and compare them to Hipparchus' Exegesis to trace the early history of stellar catalogues in Greek astronomy.

QBism is currently one of the most widely discussed 'subjective' interpretations of quantum mechanics. Its key move is to say that quantum probabilities are personalist Bayesian probabilities and that the quantum state represents subjective…

The similarity of Mercury to the Moon raises the question on mercurian analogues of lunar transient phenomena. However, since the mid-1960s, this topic has remained out of attention. Nevertheless, the discoveries of the 21st century and the…

We consider emergence from the perspective of dynamics: states of a system evolving with time. We focus on the role of a decomposition of wholes into parts, and attempt to characterize relationships between levels without reference to…

The first Edition of this book was released in 2000, just before the symposium ``Thirty Years of Supersymmetry'' was held at the William I. Fine Theoretical Physics Institute (FTPI) of the University of Minnesota. Founders and trailblazers…

Research of cosmic rays at the Physical Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences resulted in the construction of the JINR Synchrophasotron. For this purpose the Electrophysical Laboratory of the USSR Academy of Sciences was founded in…

Canonically, `classic' tests of general relativity (GR) include perihelion precession, the bending of light around stars, and gravitational redshift; `modern' tests have to do with, inter alia, relativistic time delay, equivalence principle…

This paper is an exploration of the nuanced realm of reference frames within the framework of General Relativity. Our analysis exposes a violation of Earman's SP1 principle in scenarios involving fields that are dynamically uncoupled, a…

Gauge symmetries play a central role, both in the mathematical foundations as well as the conceptual construction of modern (particle) physics theories. However, it is yet unclear whether they form a necessary component of theories, or…

Einstein's happiest thought was his leap from the observation that a falling person feels no gravity to the realization that gravity might be equivalent to acceleration. It affects all bodies in the same way because it is a property of…

The upper limit on what is computable in our universe is unknown, but widely believed to be set by the Turing machine -- with a function being physically computable if and only if it is Turing-computable. I show how this apparently mild…