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Questioning the Foundations of Physics

¿This book deals with the rise of mathematics in physical sciences, beginning with Galileo and Newton and extending to the present day. The book is divided into two parts. The first part gives a brief history of how mathematics was introduced into physics¿despite its "unreasonable effectiveness" as famously pointed out by a distinguished physicist¿and the criticisms it received from earlier thinkers. The second part takes a more philosophical approach and is intended to shed some light on that mysterious effectiveness. For this purpose, the author reviews the debate between classical philosophers on the existence of innate ideas that allow us to understand the world and also the philosophically based arguments for and against the use of mathematics in physical sciences. In this context, Schopenhauer¿s conceptions of causality and matter are very pertinent, and their validity is revisited in light of modern physics. The final question addressed is whether the effectiveness of mathematics can be explained by its ¿existence¿ in an independent platonic realm, as Gödel believed.The book aims at readers interested in the history and philosophy of physics. It is accessible to those with only a very basic (not professional) knowledge of physics.

The release of this second volume of CHIPS 2020 coincides with the 50th anniversary of Moore's Law, a critical year marked by the end of the nanometer roadmap and by a significantly reduced annual rise in chip performance.

In this largely nontechnical book, eminent physicists and philosophers address the philosophical impact of recent advances in quantum physics. These are shown to shed new light on profound questions about realism, determinism, causality or locality. The participants contribute in the spirit of an open and honest discussion, reminiscent of the time when science and philosophy were inseparable. After the editors¿ introduction, the next chapter reveals the strangeness of quantum mechanics and the subsequent discussions examine our notion of reality. The spotlight is then turned to the topic of decoherence. Bohm¿s theory is critically examined in two chapters, and the relational interpretation of quantum mechanics is likewise described and discussed. The penultimate chapter presents a proposal for resolving the measurement problem, and finally the topic of loop quantum gravity is presented by one of its founding fathers, Carlo Rovelli. The original presentations and discussions on which this volume is based took place under the auspices of the French ¿Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques¿. The book will appeal to everybody interested in knowing how our description of the world is impacted by the results of the most powerful and successful theory that physicists have ever built.

This volume contains a selection of authoritative essays exploring thecentral questions raised by the conjectured technological singularity.In informed yet jargon-free contributions written by active researchscientists, philosophers and sociologists, it goes beyond philosophicaldiscussion to provide a detailed account of the risks that the singularityposes to human society and, perhaps most usefully, the possible actionsthat society and technologists can take to manage the journey to anysingularity in a way that ensures a positive rather than a negativeimpact on society. The discussions provide perspectives that cover technological,political and business issues. The aim is to bring clarity and rigorto the debate in a way that will inform and stimulate both experts andinterested general readers.

Part III addresses experimental studies of cooperation and competition, as well as controversial ideas such as the evolution of evolvability and Stephen Jay Gould's suggestion that "spandrels" at one level of selection serve as possible sources of variability for the next higher level.

Like its much acclaimed predecessor "Quantum [Un]Speakables: From Bell to Quantum Information" (published 2002), it comprises essays by many of the worlds leading quantum physicists and philosophers.

This books sets out to explain how and why religion came into being. In contrast to the current, but incomplete approaches from disciplines such as cognitive science and psychology, the present authors adopt a new approach, equally manifest and constructive, that explains the origins of religion based strictly on behavioural biology.

This book is about the mechanisms of wealth creation, or what we like to think of as evolutionary "progress."

The prize-winning essays in this book address the fascinating but sometimes uncomfortable relationship between physics and mathematics. Is mathematics merely another natural science? Or is it the result of human creativity? Does physics simply wear mathematics like a costume, or is math the lifeblood of physical reality?The nineteen wide-ranging, highly imaginative and often entertaining essays are enhanced versions of the prize-winning entries to the FQXi essay competition ¿Trick or Truth¿, which attracted over 200 submissions. The Foundational Questions Institute, FQXi, catalyzes, supports, and disseminates research on questions at the foundations of physics and cosmology, particularly new frontiers and innovative ideas integral to a deep understanding of reality, but unlikely to be supported by conventional funding sources.

The present book gives a multi-disciplinary perspective on the physics of life and the particular role played by lipids (fats) and the lipid-bilayer component of cell membranes.

An attempt is made to quantify the value of information by its ability to reduce indefiniteness.The second part explains how to handle indefiniteness with methods from fuzzy logic, decision theory, hermeneutics and semiotics.

In this fascinating journey to the edge of science, Vidal takes on big philosophical questions: Does our universe have a beginning and an end or is it cyclic?

This book offers a lively survey of the forty-year history of string theory, focusing on how what has been called both a 'theory of everything' and a 'theory of nothing' came to exist, and how it came to occupy its present position in physics.

Filled with examples from natural and social systems, this book serves as a fascinating guide to the many applications of physics. It examines topics belonging to the broad theme of complexity, from cooperation and criticality to flock dynamics and fractals.

Life is connected with individual living beings, yet it is also a collective and inherently global phenomenon of the material world. It embodies a dual existence of cycles of phenotypic life, and their unseen driver - an uninterrupted march of genetic information whose collective immortality is guaranteed by individual mortality.

The essays in this book look at the question of whether physics can be based on information, or - as John Wheeler phrased it - whether we can get "It from Bit".

These essays by leading philosophers and scientists focus on recent ideas at the forefront of modern Darwinism, showcasing and exploring the challenges they raise as well as open problems.

Does economics conform to the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics? This important and fascinating tour of these laws and their influence on natural, technological, and social evolution uses them to analyze economic growth in Germany, Japan and the USA.

Leading quantum physicist Stapp focuses in this book on the problem of consciousness and explains how quantum mechanics allows causally effective conscious thought to be combined in a natural way with the physical brain made of neurons and atoms.

The change is from the positivistic views in which atomism, nondeterminism and measurement are fundamental, to a holistic view in realism, wherein matter - electrons, galaxies, - are correlated modes of a single continuum, the universe.

This book presents a multidisciplinary perspective on chance, with contributions from distinguished researchers in the areas of biology, cognitive neuroscience, economics, genetics, general history, law, linguistics, logic, mathematical physics, statistics, theology and philosophy.

In this essay collection, leading physicists, philosophers, and historians attempt to fill the empty theoretical ground in the foundations of information and address the related question of the limits to our knowledge of the world.Over recent decades, our practical approach to information and its exploitation has radically outpaced our theoretical understanding - to such a degree that reflection on the foundations may seem futile. But it is exactly fields such as quantum information, which are shifting the boundaries of the physically possible, that make a foundational understanding of information increasingly important. One of the recurring themes of the book is the claim by Eddington and Wheeler that information involves interaction and putting agents or observers centre stage. Thus, physical reality, in their view, is shaped by the questions we choose to put to it and is built up from the information residing at its core. This is the root of Wheeler¿s famous phrase ¿it from bit.¿ After reading the stimulating essays collected in this volume, readers will be in a good position to decide whether they agree with this view.

The release of this second volume of CHIPS 2020 coincides with the 50th anniversary of Moore's Law, a critical year marked by the end of the nanometer roadmap and by a significantly reduced annual rise in chip performance.

Participants: Guido Bacciagaluppi, Caslav Brukner, Jeffrey Bub, Arthur Fine, Christopher Fuchs, GianCarlo Ghirardi, Shelly Goldstein, Daniel Greenberger, Lucien Hardy, Anthony Leggett, Tim Maudlin, David Mermin, Lee Smolin, Antony Valentini, David Wallace, Anton Zeilinger, and Wojciech Zurek.

In a Darwinian world, religious behavior - just like other behaviors - is likely to have undergone a process of natural selection in which it was rewarded in the evolutionary currency of reproductive success.

In this compendium of essays, some of the world's leading thinkers discuss their conceptions of space and time, as viewed through the lens of their own discipline.

This book offers an accessible treatment of mind versus matter. It discusses the ethical consequences of the mind versus matter debate, and describes how quantum mechanics can radically change our understanding of the connection between mind and brain.

Or are the things that we regard as fundamental in our theories - for example space, time or the masses of elementary particles - merely awaiting a derivation from a new, yet to be discovered theory based on elements that are more fundamental?