物理学史与哲学

The aim of this article is reproduce and analyze an original article of David Bohm sent to Louis de Broglie in 1951. This article is the older document of David Bohm about his well known hidden variable theory based on the pilot wave…

This is an extended essay review of Tanya and Jeffrey Bub's Totally Random: Why Nobody Understands Quantum Mechanics: A serious comic on entanglement. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press (2018), ISBN: 9780691176956, 272 pp.,…

Bell suggested that a new perspective on quantum mechanics was needed. We propose a solution of the measurement problem based on a reconsideration of the nature of particles. The solution is presented with an idealized model involving…

Editor's Note: An English translation of Wilhelm Weber's 1878 paper "Ueber die Energie der Wechselwirkung", [Web78b]. This work is an excerpt from Weber's seventh major Memoir on Electrodynamic Measurements, "Elektrodynamische…

Editor's Note: An English translation of J. C. Poggendorff's 1857 paper "Bemerkung zu dem Aufsatz des Herrn Prof. Kirchhoff", [Pog57]. This paper is related to Kirchhoff's 1857 paper "On the motion of electricity in wires", [Kir57b] with…

In this paper I explore the scaffolding of normative assumptions that supports Sabina Leonelli's implicit appeal to the values of epistemic integrity and the global public good that conjointly animate the ethos of responsible and…

A short history of Russian researches in Chinese astronomy in 19-20 centuries

We reanalyse the solar eclipse linked to the Biblical passage about the military leader Joshua who ordered the sun to halt in the midst of the day (Joshua 10:12). Although there is agreement that the basic story is rooted in a real event,…

Einstein claimed that the fundamental dynamical insight of special relativity was the equivalence of mass and energy. I disagree. Not only are mass and energy not equivalent (whatever exactly that means) but talk of such equivalence…

Spacetime singularities in general relativity are commonly thought to be problematic, in that they signal a breakdown in the theory. We address the question of how to interpret this breakdown, restricting our attention to classical…

I review the various algebraic foundations of quantum mechanics. They have been suggested since the birth of this theory till up to last year. They are the following ones: Heisenberg-Born-Jordan (1925), Weyl (1928), Dirac (1930), von…

I show that if mental states are function of physical states, then they are nonlocal, in a sense that will be explained. I argue that, if mental states are reducible to brain physics, and if they are integrated experiences, this nonlocality…

The alleged use of Keplerian telescopes by Fabio Colonna (1567-1640), in Naples, since as early as October 1614, as claimed in some recent papers, is shown to be in fact untenable and due to a misconception.

Authoritative appraisals qualified this book as an axiomatic theory. However, being its essential content no more than an analogy, its theoretical organization cannot be an axiomatic one. In fact, in the first edition Dirac declares to…

On 13 May 1787, a convict fleet of 11 ships left Portsmouth, England, on a 24,000 km, 8-month-long voyage to New South Wales. The voyage would take the "First Fleet" under Captain Arthur Phillip via Tenerife (Canary Islands), the port of…

The voyage of the "First Fleet" from Britain to the new colony of New South Wales was not only a military enterprise, it also had a distinct scientific purpose. Britain's fifth Astronomer Royal, Nevil Maskelyne, had selected William Dawes,…

Effective Field Theory (EFT) is the successful paradigm underlying modern theoretical physics, including the "Core Theory" of the Standard Model of particle physics plus Einstein's general relativity. I will argue that EFT grants us a…

Eirene Laskarina, empress of John III Batatzes of the exiled Byzantine Empire of Nicaea (1204--1261 CE), was an important Eastern Mediterranean figure in the first half of the thirteenth century. We reassess the date of Eirene's death,…

This is a chapter of the planned monograph "Out of Nowhere: The Emergence of Spacetime in Quantum Theories of Gravity", co-authored by Nick Huggett and Christian W\"uthrich and under contract with Oxford University Press. (More information…

In this paper, we summarize the development of the concept of emergence in physical science and propose key concepts of emergence in the form of conjectures. Our conjectures are threefold: I. A system having a broken-symmetry in membership…