物理学史与哲学

Evidence is growing for the theory of embodied cognition, which posits that action and perception co-determine each other, forming an action-perception loop. This suggests that we humans somehow participate in what we perceive. So, how can…

The rareness of nearby supernovae ensures particular value to the historic records for determination of their light curves. We provide the translation of 13th century Armenian chronicle of Hetum, which by its unexpected association to…

This short essay aims to offer a discursive presentation of three scientific articles by Ettore Majorana highlighting the fundamental importance of one of them - the last one - for the investigation of the intimate constitution of matter.…

In 1763, Euler published "Dilucidationes de resistentia fluidorum" (Explanations on the resistance of fluids), a memoir that challenges the fluid resistance theories proposed by Isaac Newton and d'Alembert. Euler's work explores the…

Music has been called the temporal art par excellence. Yet, as this paper explains, it is also the atemporal art par excellence. The contradiction is, however, only apparent, and a result of viewing music from two possible perspectives.…

In a series of papers published in the course of his dissertation work in the mid 1950's, Andrzej Trautman drew upon the slow motion approximation developed by his advisor Infeld, the general covariance based strong conservation laws…

This paper provides an overview of recent historical research regarding scientifically-informed challenges to the idea that the stars are other suns orbited by other inhabited earths -- an idea that came to be known as "the Plurality of…

In his 1616 discourse on the tides, Galileo claimed that diurnal tides occurred in Lisbon, Portugal, bolstering his theory of the tides. Lisbon does not feature such tides, but in an exchange of letters in 1629-1630, Giovanfrancesco…

Haag's theorem cries out for explanation and critical assessment: it sounds the alarm that something is (perhaps) not right in one of the standard way of constructing interacting fields to be used in generating predictions for scattering…

I distinguish between pure self-locating credences and superficially self-locating credences, and argue that there is never any rationally compelling way to assign pure self-locating credences. I first argue that from a practical point of…

We take supersymmetry in the Seiberg-Witten theory as a case study of the uses of (super)symmetry arguments in studying the ontology of four-dimensional interacting quantum field theories. Together with a double expansion, supersymmetry is…

With special relativity, we seem to be facing a conundrum. It is a very well-tested theory; in this way, the Minkowski spacetime must be "capturing" essential features of space and time. However, its geometry seems to be incompatible with…

In this work, we attempt to define a notion of compositeness compatible with Quantum Field Theory. Considering the analytic properties of the S-matrix, we conclude that there is no satisfactory definition of compositeness compatible with…

We elucidate how different theoretical assumptions bring about radically different interpretations of the same experimental result. We do this by analyzing special relativity as it was originally formulated. Then, we examine the…

In the famous thought experiment studied in this article, Galileo attempted to refute the Aristotelian hypothesis that heavier bodies should fall more quickly than lighter ones. After pointing out some inconsistencies in Galileo's approach,…

A well-known topic within the philosophy of physics is the problem of fine-tuning: the fact that the universal constants seem to take non-arbitrary values in order for live to thrive in our Universe. In this paper we will talk about this…

This brief brochure is intended to present a philosophical theory known as relational materialism. We introduce the postulates and principles of the theory, articulating its ontological and epistemological content using the language of…

We will argue that a phenomenological analysis of consciousness, similar to that of Husserl, shows that the effects of phenomenal qualities shape our perception of the world. It also shows the way the physical and mathematical sciences…

Spacetime dualities arise whenever two theories -- despite being structurally equivalent in some sense -- seemingly provide us with two radically different spatiotemporal descriptions of the world. This often involves radical differences in…

The purpose of this article is to provide a novel approach and justification of the idea that classical physics and quantum physics can neither function nor even be conceived one without the other - in line with ideas attributed to e.g.…