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History and Philosophy of Physics papers — page 10

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One Plus One Equals Two Ones: On Identity, Aggregation, and Counting
A childhood observation of Thakur Anukulchandra that "one and one can only be two ones, not simply two" motivates a precise inquiry: what, exactly, is asserted when we pass from two concrete…
Souvik GhoshAug 12, 2025
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Theoretical Discovery, Experiment, and Controversy in the Aharonov-Bohm Effect: An Oral History Interview
This oral history interview provides Yakir Aharonov's perspective on the theoretical discovery of the Aharonov-Bohm effect in 1959, during his PhD studies in Bristol with David Bohm, the reception of…
Yakir Aharonov, Guy HetzroniAug 11, 2025
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Multi-field as a determinable
The paper advances the hypothesis that the multi-field is a determinable, that is, a physical object characterized by indeterminate values with respect to some properties. The multi-field is a…
Davide RomanoAug 6, 2025
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On something and nothing: The interface of two types of nothing
We suggest that the question of why is there something rather than nothing can be answered by the existence of two types of nothing. We propose that matter occurs at the boundaries of intersection of…
Adam BrownsteinAug 5, 2025
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Cornelis Easton:The Milky Way as a spiral galaxy
Cornelis Easton (1864-1929) became a journalist and newspaper editor. During most of his career he was active as an amateur astronomer and contributed important papers in international astronomical…
Pieter C. van der KruitAug 5, 2025
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Quantum panprotopsychism and a consciousness-centered universe
In previous publications, we have argued that a form of panprotopsychism based on quantum states and events offers a solution to the combination problem. This framework explains the emergence of…
Rodolfo GambiniAug 4, 2025
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Newtons First Law Is Not a Special Case of the Second Law
Newtons Laws of Motion form the basis of classical mechanics, but misconceptions about their interrelationships persist in pedagogy. A prevalent misunderstanding is that Newtons First Law is a…
Indresh Yadav, P. M. GeethuAug 4, 2025
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Beyond the Wavefunction: Qualia Abstraction Language Mechanics and the Grammar of Awareness
We propose a formal reconstruction of quantum mechanics grounded not in external mathematical abstractions, but in the structured dynamics of subjective experience. The Qualia Abstraction Language…
Mikołaj Sienicki, Krzysztof SienickiAug 3, 2025
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The Philosophy and Physics of Duality
This monograph discusses dualities in physics: what dualities are, their main examples--from quantum mechanics and electrodynamics to statistical mechanics, quantum field theory and string…
Sebastian De Haro, Jeremy ButterfieldAug 3, 2025
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The Prediction and Interpretation of Singularities and Black Holes: From Einstein and Schwarzschild to Penrose and Wheeler
The Schwarzschild solution was the first exact solution to Einstein's 1915 field equations, found by Karl Schwarzschild as early as 1916. And yet, physicists, mathematicians and philosophers have…
Dennis LehmkuhlJul 30, 2025
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Antirealism in sheep's clothing: Wave function realism and scientific realism
Scientific realism is the philosophical stance that science tracks truth, in particular in its depiction of the world's ontology. Ontologically, this involves a commitment to the existence of…
Raoni Arroyo, Jonas R. Becker ArenhartJul 29, 2025
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Relational Observables, Quiddities, and Structural Realism
In this article, I argue that modern spacetime physics causes problems for a number of traditional accounts of modality, but also offers important new ideas about the connection between modal and…
Emily AdlamJul 27, 2025
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Empirical structure physicalism and realism, Hempel's dilemma, and an optimistic meta-induction
Motivated by a generalization of Hempel's dilemma, I introduce a novel notion of empirical structure, as well as theory supervenience as a new reductive relationship between theories. One theory…
Balazs GyenisJul 26, 2025
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A not-too-simple solution to Goodman's New Riddle of induction
I review the works of Gärdenfors (1990) and Scorzato (2013) and show that their combination provides an elegant solution of Goodman's new riddle of induction. The solution is based on two main…
Luigi ScorzatoJul 23, 2025
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Slow neutrons in Palermo: a forgotten conference by Enrico Fermi
On October 22, 1934, in a famous experiment, Enrico Fermi and his colleagues discovered that a significant increase in induced radioactivity can be obtained when neutrons are slowed down by means of…
Emanuele Goldoni, Ledo StefaniniJul 22, 2025
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Historical origins of quantum entanglement in particle physics
In this paper, the historical origins of quantum entanglement in particle physics are systematically and thoroughly investigated. 1957, Bohm and Aharonov noted that the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen…
Yu ShiJul 18, 2025
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A translation of the paper "Presentation of some observations that could be made to shed light on Meteorology" by Johann Heinrich Lambert (1771)
The Mulhouse mathematician Jean-Henri (or Johann Heinrich) Lambert (August 26 or 28, 1728; September 25, 1777) is well known for having devised the conformal conic projection in 1772, which is still…
Pascal MarquetJul 17, 2025
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Without microphysical causation, just anything cannot begin to exist just anywhere
According to the Causal Principle, anything that begins to exist has a cause. In turn, various authors -- including Thomas Hobbes, Jonathan Edwards, and Arthur Prior -- have defended the thesis that,…
Daniel LinfordJul 15, 2025
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Why did the dark matter hypothesis supersede modified gravity in the 1980s?
In the 1960s and 1970s a series of observations and theoretical developments highlighted the presence of several anomalies which could, in principle, be explained by postulating one of the following…
Antonis AntoniouJul 15, 2025
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Disentangling Boltzmann brains, the time-asymmetry of memory, and the second law
Are your perceptions, memories and observational data, a statistical fluctuation out of the thermal equilibrium of the universe, having no correlation with the actual past state of the universe?…
David Wolpert, Carlo Rovelli, Jordan ScharnhorstJul 15, 2025
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The Toll of the Tolman Effect: On the Status of Classical Temperature in General Relativity
The Tolman effect is well-known in relativistic cosmology but rarely discussed outside it. That is surprising because the effect -- that systems extended over a varying gravitational potential…
Eugene Y. S. Chua, Craig CallenderJul 14, 2025
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Relativistic quantum mechanics and quantum field theory
Relativistic quantum mechanics can be considered to have begun with a search for wave equations corresponding to each intrinsic spin. However, relativistic quantum physics differs fundamentally from…
Urjit A. YajnikJul 10, 2025
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Wave Mechanics and C-equivalence
We establish that de Broglie's wave, as it is introduced in his Thesis, is not a wave on a given space, but on the contrary itself determines a system in which Special Relativity is locally valid.…
Satyanad KichenassamyJul 8, 2025
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Disentangling scientific realism from anti-exceptionalism
Scientific realism is, currently, one of the most well-entrenched background assumptions of some relevant versions of anti-exceptionalism about logic. We argue that this is a sort of sociological…
Jonas R. B. Arenhart, Raoni Arroyo, Ederson Safra MeloJul 6, 2025
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Abstraction, Explanation, and Effective Field Theories
Effective field theories (EFTs) are widely considered by physicists to be explanatory and to be the appropriate frameworks for modelling various phenomena at different scales. At the same time, they…
Martin KingJul 4, 2025
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