相关论文: Galileo, Ignoramus: Mathematics versus Philosophy …
This is an attempt to present axioms for Euclidean geometry, aiming at the following goals: to work with geometric notions (thus not merely identify points with pairs of numbers, giving a special status to a particular coordinate system);…
Practicing mathematicians often assume that mathematical claims, when they are true, have good reasons to be true. Such a state of affairs is "unreasonable", in Wigner's sense, because basic results in computational complexity suggest that…
This article looks at philosophical aspects and questions that modern astrophysical research gives rise to. Other than cosmology, astrophysics particularly deals with understanding phenomena and processes operating at "intermediate" cosmic…
We still lack any consensus about what one is actually talking about as one uses quantum mechanics. There is a gap between the abstract terms in which the theory is couched and the phenomena the theory enables each of us to account for so…
For four decades it has been argued that we need to adopt a new conception of science called aim-oriented empiricism. This has far-reaching implications and repercussions for science, the philosophy of science, academic inquiry in general,…
Some 400 years after Galileo, modern telescopes have enabled humanity to "see" what the natural eye cannot. Astronomical images today contain information about incredibly large objects located across vast distances and reveal information…
Wolfgang Pauli's philosophy and physics were intertwined. His philosophy was a variety of Platonism, in which Pauli's affiliation with Carl Jung formed an integral part, but Pauli's philosophical explorations in physics appeared before he…
The literature dealing with G\"{o}del's legacy is largely preoccupied with challenging his philosophical views, regarding them as outdated. We believe that such an approach prevents us from seeing G\"{o}del's views in the right light and…
Astronomy provides a laboratory for extreme physics, a window into environments at extremes of distance, temperature and density that often can't be reproduced in Earth laboratories, or at least not right away. A surprising amount of the…
A fundamental problem in science is how to make logical inferences from scientific data. Mere data does not suffice since additional information is necessary to select a domain of models or hypotheses and thus determine the likelihood of…
Mathematical research is often motivated by the desire to reach a beautiful result or to prove it in an elegant way. Mathematician's work is thus strongly influenced by his aesthetic judgments. However, the criteria these judgments are…
Raffaello Caverni, a Catholic priest, was a truly lay and anti-establishment intellectual in his opinions both on Darwin and on Galileo. He opposed the mythicization of Galileo, as a rule in Italy after the unification, even though he…
A goal of physics is to understand the greatest possible breadth of natural phenomena in terms of the most economical set of basic concepts. However, as the understanding of physics has developed historically, its pedagogy and language have…
The intrinsic difficulties in building realistic climate models and in providing complete, reliable and meaningful observational datasets, and the conceptual impossibility of testing theories against data imply that the usual Galilean…
Since I first became enthralled with physics as a teenager, I've been intrigued by the philosophical aspects of the discipline. As I approached the end of my career as an experimental physicist and observational astronomer (I'm now…
This project aims to attract school students and teachers from the state education system from Ca\c{c}apava do Sul - RS to Sciences and specially to Astronomy. We made astronomical observations using a Galileoscope choosing the Moon as a…
The aggregate appearance of the naked-eye stars would appear to Galileo to be direct observational support for his ideas about the stars, and indirect observational support for the Copernican theory over the rival Tychonic theory. Brief…
`Philosophy' was speakable for John Bell but is not for many physicists. The border between philosophy and physics is here illustrated through Brownian motion and Bell experiments. `Measurement', however, was unspeakable for Bell. His…
Physics has a bad press: it is seen by a majority of people as a boring discipline ever since their High School days. There is no glamour to it, just toil and pain, and for many who engaged in it, the end sight is often unemployment. Could…
The aim of this essay is to propose a conception of mathematics that is fully consonant with naturalism. By that I mean the hypothesis that everything that exists is part of the natural world, which makes up a unitary whole.