相关论文: Pathological Science
It is hard to overstate the importance that the concept of symmetry has had in every field of physics, a fact alluded to by the Nobel Prize winner P.W. Anderson, who once wrote that physics is the study of symmetry. Whereas the idea of…
This paper proposes a new definition of science based on the distinction between the activity of scientists and the product of that activity: the former is denoted (lower-case) science and the latter (upper-case) Science. These definitions…
In a recently proposed interpretation of quantum mechanics, U. Mohrhoff advocates original and thought-provoking views on space and time, the definition of macroscopic objects, and the meaning of probability statements. The interpretation…
Quantum weirdness has been in the news recently, thanks to an ingenious new experiment by a team led by Roland Hanson, at the Delft University of Technology. Much of the coverage presents the experiment as good (even conclusive) news for…
In these two lectures I will discuss some outstanding problems in the standard model of cosmology, concentrating on the physics that might be related to the title of this school, ``Searching for the totally unexpected in the LHC era.'' In…
In science as elsewhere, attention is a limited resource and scientists compete with one another to produce the most exciting, novel and impactful results. We develop a game-theoretic model to explore how such competition influences the…
This paper avers that science is not demarcated from other disciplines by a specific unique methodology, but by its specific scientific rationality and rational grounds. In this context, the notion and structure of scientific reason are…
Recent philosophical discussions about metaphysical indeterminacy have been substantiated with the idea that quantum mechanics, one of the most successful physical theories in the history of science, provides explicit instances of worldly…
The field of nuclear science has considerably advanced since its beginning just over a century ago. Today, the science of rare isotopes is on the cusp of a new era with theoretical and computing advances complementing experimental…
Quantum theory describes our universe incredibly successfully. To our classically-inclined brains, however, it is a bizarre description that requires a re-imagining of what fundamental reality, or "ontology", could look like. This thesis…
There is an innate human tendency, one might call it the "league table mentality," to construct rankings. Schools, hospitals, sports teams, movies, and myriad other objects are ranked even though their inherent multi-dimensionality would…
Richard Feynman famously declared, "I think that I can safely say that nobody really understands quantum mechanics." Sean Carroll lamented the persistence of this sentiment in a recent opinion piece entitled, "Even Physicists Don't…
Many systems involve numerous interacting parts and the whole system can have properties that the individual parts do not. I take this novelty as the defining characteristic of an emergent property. Other characteristics associated with…
In a context where most published articles are devoted to the development of "new methods", comparison studies are generally appreciated by readers but surprisingly given poor consideration by many scientific journals. In connection with…
This pseudo-paper consists of excerpts drawn from two of my quantum-email samizdats. Section 1 draws a picture of a physical world whose essence is ``Darwinism all the way down.'' Section 2 outlines how quantum theory should be viewed in…
Spatial branching processes became increasingly popular in the past decades, not only because of their obvious connection to biology, but also because superprocesses are intimately related to nonlinear partial differential equations.…
In many countries and at European level, research policy increasingly focuses on 'excellent' researchers. The concept of excellence however is complex and multidimensional. For individual scholars it involves talents for innovative…
Science is a crowning glory of the human spirit and its applications remain our best hope for social progress. But there are limitations to current science and perhaps to any science. The general mind-body problem is known to be intractable…
The likelihood principle makes strong claims about the nature of statistical evidence but is controversial. Its claims are undermined by the existence of several examples that are assumed to show that it allows, with unity probability,…
In this paper, it is argued that theoretical physics is more akin to an organism than to a rigid structure.It is in this sense that the epithet, "sick", applies to it. It is argued that classical physics is a model of a healthy science, and…