相关论文: Democritus as Taoist

The question of cosmic beginning has always attracted considerable attention from serious thinkers past and present. This article examines Ibn Sina's proposed solution to the vexed problem that given an eternally existing world and one…

Using the decoherence formalism of Gell-Mann and Hartle, a quantum system is found which is the equivalent of the classical chaotic Duffing oscillator. The similarities and the differences from the classical oscillator are examined; in…

As Artificial General Intelligence edges closer to reality, Artificial Superintelligence does too. This paper argues that ASI's unparalleled capabilities might lead people to attribute godlike infallibility to it, resulting in a cognitive…

A logical model of spatiotemporal structures is pictured as a succession of processes in time. One usual way to formalize time structure is to assume the global existence of time points and then collect some of them to form time intervals…

The theory of probability and the quantum theory, the one mathematical and the other physical, are related in that each admits a number of very different interpretations. It has been proposed that the conceptual problems of the quantum…

Some verses of Dante Alighieri suggest his astrological sign and his probable date of birth. This leads us to reflect on the different methods, increasingly divergent, with which sciences as opposed to beliefs approach reality.

It is proposed here that all successful and complete theories always proceed through an intermediate stage of instrumentalism to the final stage of realism. Examples from history of science (both classical and modern) in support of this…

Inspired by a quantum mechanical formalism to model concepts and their disjunctions and conjunctions, we put forward in this paper a specific hypothesis. Namely that within human thought two superposed layers can be distinguished: (i) a…

We present some arguments for the thesis that a set-theoretic inspired faith, in the ability of intuitive truth to faithfully reflect relationships between elements of a Platonic universe, may be as misplaced as an assumption that such…

This paper elaborates on relationalism about space and time as motivated by a minimalist ontology of the physical world: there are only matter points that are individuated by the distance relations among them, with these relations changing.…

Abraham Robinson's philosophical stance has been the subject of several recent studies. Erhardt following Gaifman claims that Robinson was a finitist, and that there is a tension between his philosophical position and his actual…

After a survey of the present state of cosmological theory and observations, this article discusses a series of major themes underlying the relation of philosophy to cosmology. These are: A: The uniqueness of the universe; B: The large…

Two types of population models are well known -- the continuous and the discrete types.The two have very different characteristics and methods of solutions and analysis.In this note, we point out that an iterative technique when applied to…

The paper highlights some commonalities between the development of cryptocurrencies and the evolution of ecosystems. Concepts from evolutionary finance embedded in toy models consistent with stylized facts are employed to understand what…

Due to recent advances in synthetic biology and artificial life, the origin of life is currently a hot topic of research. We review the literature and argue that the two traditionally competing "replicator-first" and "metabolism-first"…

Every countable language which conforms to classical logic is shown to have an extension which conforms to classical logic, and has a definitional theory of truth. That extension has a semantical theory of truth, if every sentence of the…

In this note some philosophical thoughts and observations about mathematics are expressed, arranged as challenges to some common claims.

The persisting gap between the formal and the informal mathematics is due to an inadequate notion of mathematical theory behind the current formalization techniques. I mean the (informal) notion of axiomatic theory according to which a…

We summarize the arguments that space and time are likely to be emergent notions; i.e. they are not present in the fundamental formulation of the theory, but appear as approximate macroscopic concepts. Along the way we briefly review…

We pursue the view that quantum theory may be an emergent structure related to large space-time scales. In particular, we consider classical Hamiltonian systems in which the intrinsic proper time evolution parameter is related through a…