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  1. Drawing scales apart: The origins of Wilson's conception of effective field theories.Sébastien Rivat - 2021 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 90 (C):321-338.
    This article traces the origins of Kenneth Wilson's conception of effective field theories (EFTs) in the 1960s. I argue that what really made the difference in Wilson's path to his first prototype of EFT are his long-standing pragmatic aspirations and methodological commitments. Wilson's primary interest was to work on mathematically interesting physical problems and he thought that progress could be made by treating them as if they could be analyzed in principle by a sufficiently powerful computer. The first point explains (...)
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  2. Counterpossible Reasoning in Physics.Alastair Wilson - 2021 - Philosophy of Science 88 (5):1113-1124.
    This article explores three ways in which physics may involve counterpossible reasoning. The first way arises when evaluating false theories: to say what the world would be like if the theory were true, we need to evaluate counterfactuals with physically impossible antecedents. The second way relates to the role of counterfactuals in characterizing causal structure: to say what causes what in physics, we need to make reference to physically impossible scenarios. The third way is novel: to model metaphysical dependence in (...)
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  3. Statistical Mechanics and Scientific Explanation: Determinism, Indeterminism and Laws of Nature.Valia Allori (ed.) - 2020 - Singapore: World Scientific.
    The book explores several open questions in the philosophy of statistical mechanics. Each chapter is written by a leading expert in the field. Here is a list of some questions that are addressed in the book: 1) Boltzmann showed how the phenomenological gas laws of thermodynamics can be derived from statistical mechanics. Since classical mechanics is a deterministic theory there are no probabilities in it. Since statistical mechanics is based on classical mechanics, all the probabilities statistical mechanics talks about cannot (...)
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  4. Space Emergence in Contemporary Physics: Why We Do Not Need Fundamentality, Layers of Reality and Emergence.Baptiste Le Bihan - 2018 - Disputatio 10 (49):71-95.
    ‘Space does not exist fundamentally: it emerges from a more fundamental non-spatial structure.’ This intriguing claim appears in various research programs in contemporary physics. Philosophers of physics tend to believe that this claim entails either that spacetime does not exist, or that it is derivatively real. In this article, I introduce and defend a third metaphysical interpretation of the claim: reductionism about space. I argue that, as a result, there is no need to subscribe to fundamentality, layers of reality and (...)
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  5. A new look at emergence. Or when after is different.Alexandre Guay & Olivier Sartenaer - 2016 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 6 (2):297-322.
    In this paper, we put forward a new account of emergence called “transformational emergence”. Such an account captures a variety of emergence that can be considered as being diachronic and weakly ontological. The fact that transformational emergence actually constitutes a genuine form of emergence is motivated. Besides, the account is free of traditional problems surrounding more usual, synchronic versions of emergence, and it can find a strong empirical support in a specific physical phenomenon, the fractional quantum Hall effect, which has (...)
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  6. Interpretation neutrality in the classical domain of quantum theory.Joshua Rosaler - 2016 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 53:54-72.
    I show explicitly how concerns about wave function collapse and ontology can be decoupled from the bulk of technical analysis necessary to recover localized, approximately Newtonian trajectories from quantum theory. In doing so, I demonstrate that the account of classical behavior provided by decoherence theory can be straightforwardly tailored to give accounts of classical behavior on multiple interpretations of quantum theory, including the Everett, de Broglie-Bohm and GRW interpretations. I further show that this interpretation-neutral, decoherence-based account conforms to a general (...)
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  7. The Deep Metaphysics of Space: An Alternative History and Ontology beyond Substantivalism and Relationism.Edward Slowik - 2016 - Cham, Switzerland: Springer.
    This volume explores the inadequacies of the two standard conceptions of space or spacetime, substantivalism and relationism, and in the process, proposes a new historical interpretation of these physical theories. This book also examines and develops alternative ontological conceptions of space, such as the property theory of space and emergent spacetime hypotheses, and explores additional historical elements of seventeenth century theories and other metaphysical themes. Readers will learn about specific problems with the substantivalism versus relationism dichotomy. First, Newton and Leibniz (...)
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  8. THE ELEMENT HYDROGEN:ENERGY-ENERGY EQQUIVALENCE.V. Sreesankar - 2016 - RESEARCH JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL SCIENCES 4 (1):1-3.
    Hydrogen, an atom composed of a single proton and electron, is the fundamental and most abundant element in the universe. Hydrogen composes approximately 90% of the visible universe. As we all know there are different types of energies linked with proton –electron system due to the fundamental forces in any atom such as Kinetic energy, Electrostatic energy,Gravitational energy etc. In quantum framework, Gravity is a very weak force and it’s equivalence with other forces were once thought impossible. I strongly believe (...)
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  9. Is de Broglie-Bohm Theory Specially Equipped to Recover Classical Behavior?Joshua Rosaler - 2015 - Philosophy of Science 82 (5):1175-1187.
    Supporters of the de Broglie-Bohm interpretation of quantum theory argue that because the theory, like classical mechanics, concerns the motions of point particles in 3D space, it is specially suited to recover classical behavior. I offer a novel account of classicality in dBB theory, if only to show that such an account falls out almost trivially from results developed in the largely interpretation-neutral context of decoherence theory. I then argue that this undermines any special claim that dBB theory is purported (...)
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  10. Local reduction in physics.Joshua Rosaler - 2015 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 50 (C):54-69.
    A conventional wisdom about the progress of physics holds that successive theories wholly encompass the domains of their predecessors through a process that is often called reduction. While certain influential accounts of inter-theory reduction in physics take reduction to require a single "global" derivation of one theory's laws from those of another, I show that global reductions are not available in all cases where the conventional wisdom requires reduction to hold. However, I argue that a weaker "local" form of reduction, (...)
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  11. (1 other version)On Discrete Physics: a Perfect Deterministic Structure for Reality – and "A Direct Logical Derivation of the Fundamental Laws of Nature".Ramin [A.] Zahedi - 2015 - CERN Document, Geneva, Switzerland, Record:1980381, PP. 11-99; Paris-Sorbonne University Publs., CCSD/CNRS-Record:01547739, PP. 11-99.
    Why do the fundamental forces of nature (i.e., the forces that appear to cause all the movements and interactions in the universe) manifest in the way, shape, and form that they do? This is one of the greatest ontological questions that science can investigate. In this article, we are going to consider this crucial question (and relevant issues) via a new axiomatic mathematical formalism. -/- In Part I (pp. 1-10) of this article we provide a general overview (and analysis) of (...)
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  12. Reduction and the Neighbourhood of Theories: A New Approach to the Intertheoretic Relations in Physics.Rico Gutschmidt - 2014 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 45 (1):49-70.
    This paper proposes a classification of the intertheoretic relations in physics by bringing out the conditions for a relation of reduction which is eliminative, so that a theory reduced in terms of reductionism is superfluous in principle, and by distinguishing such a relation from another one based on comparison, which will be called neighbourhood of theories; the latter is a neighbouring relation between theories and is not able to support claims of eliminative reductionism. In the first part, it will be (...)
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  13. A Unified Cognitive Model of Visual Filling-In Based on an Emergic Network Architecture.David Pierre Leibovitz - 2013 - Dissertation, Carleton University
    The Emergic Cognitive Model (ECM) is a unified computational model of visual filling-in based on the Emergic Network architecture. The Emergic Network was designed to help realize systems undergoing continuous change. In this thesis, eight different filling-in phenomena are demonstrated under a regime of continuous eye movement (and under static eye conditions as well). -/- ECM indirectly demonstrates the power of unification inherent with Emergic Networks when cognition is decomposed according to finer-grained functions supporting change. These can interact to raise (...)
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  14. The Deep Metaphysics of Quantum Gravity: The Seventeenth Century Legacy and an Alternative Ontology Beyond Substantivalism and Relationism.Edward Slowik - 2013 - Studies in the History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 44 (4):490-499.
    This essay presents an alternative to contemporary substantivalist and relationist interpretations of quantum gravity hypotheses by means of an historical comparison with the ontology of space in the seventeenth century. Utilizing differences in the spatial geometry between the foundational theory and the theory derived from the foundational, in conjunction with nominalism and platonism, it will be argued that there are crucial similarities between seventeenth century and contemporary theories of space, and that these similarities reveal a host of underlying conceptual issues (...)
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  15. Wolfgang Pauli and the Fine-Structure Constant.Michael A. Sherbon - 2012 - Journal of Science 2 (3):148-154.
    Wolfgang Pauli was influenced by Carl Jung and the Platonism of Arnold Sommerfeld, who introduced the fine-structure constant. Pauli’s vision of a World Clock is related to the symbolic form of the Emerald Tablet of Hermes and Plato’s geometric allegory otherwise known as the Cosmological Circle attributed to ancient tradition. With this vision Pauli revealed geometric clues to the mystery of the fine-structure constant that determines the strength of the electromagnetic interaction. A Platonic interpretation of the World Clock and the (...)
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  16. Vision of Oneness.Ignazio Licata & Ammar J. Sakaji (eds.) - 2011 - Aracne Editrice.
    A cura di Ignazio Licata, Ammar J. Sakaji Jeffrey A. Barrett, Enrico Celeghini, Leonardo Chiatti, Maurizio Consoli, Davide Fiscaletti, Ervin Goldfain, Annick Lesne, Maria Paola Lombardo, Mohammad Mehrafarin, Ronald Mirman, Ulrich Mohrhoff, Renato Nobili, Farrin Payandeh, Eliano Pessa, L.I Petrova, Erasmo Recami, Giovanni Salesi, Francesco Maria Scarpa, Mohammad Vahid Takook, Giuseppe Vitiello This volume comes out from an informal discussion between friends and colleagues on the answer:what topic do you think as fundamental in theoretical physics nowadays? Obviously wereceived different answers (...)
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  17. Must a physicalist be a microphysicalist?David Papineau - 2008 - In Jakob Hohwy & Jesper Kallestrup (eds.), Being Reduced: New Essays on Reduction, Explanation, and Causation. New York: Oxford University Press.
    This chapter challenges the entailment from physicalism to microphysicalism — the view that all facts metaphysically supervene on the microphysical facts. It observes that physicalists can avoid microphysicalism by rejecting physical microscopism. Humean supervenience is a strong version of microphysicalism, and it is false if a non-Humean view of laws is true. But such a view is consistent with physicalism. A weaker form of microphysicalism adds microphysical non-Humean laws to get a broader microphysicalist supervenience base for all facts. On this (...)
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  18. Studying marginalised physical sciences.Sean F. Johnston - 2007 - ‘Writing the History’ of the Physical Sciences After 1945: State of the Art, Questions, and Perspectives, Strasbourg, 8-9 June 2007.
    The second half of the twentieth century offers distinct perspectives for the historian of science. The role of the State, the expansion of certain industries and the cultural engagement with science were all transformed. The foregrounding of certain strands of physical science in the public and administrative consciousness – nuclear physics and planetary science, for example – had a complement: the ‘backgrounding’ or institutional neglect of a number of other fields. My work in the history of the physical sciences has (...)
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  19. Whose Devil? Which Details?Gordon Belot - 2005 - Philosophy of Science 72 (1):128-153.
    Batterman has recently argued that fundamental theories are typically explanatorily inadequate, in that there exist physical phenomena whose explanation requires that the conceptual apparatus of a fundamental theory be supplemented by that of a less fundamental theory. This paper is an extended critical commentary on that argument: situating its importance, describing its structure, and developing a line of objection to it. The objection is that in the examples Batterman considers, the mathematics of the less fundamental theory is definable in terms (...)
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  20. Basic Structures of Matter - Supergravitation Unified Theory.Stoyan Sarg (ed.) - 2005 - Los Angeles: amazon.
    A model of unified field theory is built by using a more general concept about matter, space and time. The known physical laws and postulates are obtainable if the classical empty space is filled by unique structure of matter. A model called a Cosmic Lattice (CL) is suggested according to which the vacuum possesses a underlying structure built of two types of super dens sub-elementary particles arranged in nodes. These particles called twisted prisms are from two different intrinsic matter substances. (...)
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  21. The second law of probability dynamics.Martin Barrett & Elliott Sober - 1994 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 45 (4):941-953.
  22. The mechanics of individuality in nature.Stanford Goldman - 1971 - Foundations of Physics 1 (4):395-408.
    Evidence is presented to support the hypothesis that there is a set of basically similar phenomena or characteristics of physics, biology, and sociology. Six of these are identified. Five of them are usually associated with quantum mechanics. They are the existence of eigenstates, transform domains, bosons and fermions, particles and antiparticles, and complementarity. The sixth, namely alternation of generation, is usually associated with biology. The hypothesis leads to some new points of view and interpretations in biology, sociology, and physics.
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  23. How science comprehends chaos.Sunny Auyang - manuscript
    Behaviors of chaotic systems are unpredictable. Chaotic systems are deterministic, their evolutions being governed by dynamical equations. Are the two statements contradictory? They are not, because the theory of chaos encompasses two levels of description. On a higher level, unpredictability appears as an emergent property of systems that are predictable on a lower level. In this talk, we examine the structure of dynamical theories to see how they employ multiple descriptive levels to explain chaos, bifurcation, and other complexities of nonlinear (...)
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  24. Inter-Theory Relations in Physics: Case Studies from Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Field Theory.Joshua Rosaler - unknown
    I defend three general claims concerning inter-theoretic reduction in physics. First, the popular notion that a superseded theory in physics is generally a simple limit of the theory that supersedes it paints an oversimplified picture of reductive relations in physics. Second, where reduction specifically between two dynamical systems models of a single system is concerned, reduction requires the existence of a particular sort of function from the state space of the low-level model to that of the high-level model that approximately (...)
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