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History and Philosophy of Physics papers — page 14

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A Short History of Rocks: or, How to Invent Quantum Computing
This essay gives a short, informal account of the development of digital logic from the Pleistocene to the Manhattan Project, the introduction of reversible circuits, and Richard Feynman's allied…
David WakehamFeb 14, 2025
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Notes on a future quantum event-ontology
This essay is a two-step reflection on the question 'Which events (can be said to) occur in quantum phenomena?' The first step regiments the ontological category of "statistical phenomena" and…
Sebastian HorvatFeb 12, 2025
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Does a Fine-Tuned Universe Tell Us Anything About God?
The apparent fine-tuning of several fundamental parameters that determine the properties of our Universe and make it hospitable to life is sometimes used as an argument for God from design. I review…
Adam D. HincksFeb 12, 2025
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Orientation of Entrance and Burial Chamber in the Pyramids of the Egyptian Fourth and Fifth Dynasties
In a recent work, arxiv:2412.20407, we have mentioned two Egyptian kings, Shepseskaf and Userkaf, of the IV and V Dynasties. Here we continue discussing their burial places, that is their pyramids,…
Amelia Carolina SparavignaFeb 12, 2025
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On the distinction between beables and qualia
The link between the de Broglie-Bohm interpretation and the hard problem of consciousness is investigated. We highlight that beables of the de Broglie-Bohm interpretation are not themselves qualia,…
Adam BrownsteinFeb 11, 2025
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Chien-Shiung Wu as the experimental pioneer in quantum entanglement: a 2022 note
Advised by Prof. Chen Ning Yang, we review the early pioneering work by Chien-Shiung Wu on entangled photons created from the electron-positron annihilation. This paper formed a basis of the author's…
Yu ShiFeb 10, 2025
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Prigogine's temporalization of physics: two agnostic attitudes of physicists
In this paper, I aim to clarify the unconscious ideologies and attitudes held by physicists through Prigogine's work. Prigogine was an outstanding chemist and physicist who made significant…
Hirokazu MaruokaFeb 5, 2025
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Galileo Galilei and Satellite Navigation
In 1492, for the first time, an unknown ocean opened up before sailors: weeks of navigation and no idea how to pinpoint their location. Since ancient times, navigators had known how to determine…
Alessandro De AngelisJan 27, 2025
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Bivalent Quantum Indeterminacy
This paper provides a novel metametaphysical approach to quantum indeterminacy. More specifically, it argues that bivalent quantum logic can successfully account for this kind of indeterminacy, given…
Claudio Calosi, Iulian D. ToaderJan 25, 2025
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Antiquity, Dark Ages and Renaissance of Light-Front Higher Spin Theory
These notes contain -- apart from some physics -- scattered reminiscences of everyday life at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in G\"oteborg in the early eighties. The text has been in the…
Anders K H BengtssonJan 23, 2025
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Navigating permanent underdetermination in dark energy and inflationary cosmology
We identify troubling cases of so-called `permanent underdetermination' in both dark energy and inflationary cosmology. We bring to bear (a) a taxonomy of possible responses to underdetermination,…
William J. Wolf, James ReadJan 23, 2025
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Algorithmic Idealism III: "Algorithmic State" Formulation of Quantum Mechanics
This work introduces Algorithmic Idealism a framework that reinterprets quantum mechanics as a computational process governed by algorithmic probability informational simplicity and utility…
Krzysztof SienickiJan 20, 2025
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Not Quite Killing It: Black Hole Evaporation, Global Energy, and De-Idealization
A family of arguments for black hole evaporation relies on conservation laws, defined through symmetries represented by Killing vector fields which exist globally or asymptotically. However, these…
Eugene Y. S. ChuaJan 19, 2025
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From Many Models to ONE THEORY
The year 2024 marks two anniversaries: The 70th anniversary of CERN and the 50th anniversary of the J/ discovery. At this occasion I have been asked to give review talks on the significance of…
J. IliopoulosJan 17, 2025
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Does Quantum Gravity Happen at the Planck Scale?
The claim that at the so-called Planck scale our current physics breaks down and a new theory of quantum gravity is required is ubiquitous, but the evidence is shakier than the confidence of those…
Caspar JacobsJan 13, 2025
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The Spectre of Underdetermination in Modern Cosmology
The scientific status of physical cosmology has been the subject of philosophical debate ever since detailed mathematical models of the Universe emerged from Einstein's general theory of relativity.…
Pedro G. Ferreira, William J. Wolf, James ReadJan 10, 2025
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Rationally warranted promise: the virtue-economic account of pursuit-worthiness
Pursuing a scientific idea is often justified by the promise associated with it. Philosophers of science have proposed a variety of approaches to such promise, including more specific indicators.…
Patrick M. Duerr, Enno FischerJan 9, 2025
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Quantum Perspectivism vs Nietzschean Perspectivism
This is a work of hard physical philosophy, where Quantum Perspectivism is shown to function as both an interpretation of quantum mechanics and a physical model for understanding Nietzsche's…
Badis YdriJan 5, 2025
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Two Egyptian Kings, Shepseskaf and Userkaf, and a solar eclipse (2471 BC)
Recently, arXiv published a work by G. Magli about the eclipse of 1 April 2471 BC and a supposed influence of it on the end of the fourth Egyptian dynasty and the beginning of the fifth one. In…
Amelia Carolina SparavignaDec 29, 2024
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The Hole Argument for Reference Frames
We exploit the results of Bamonti and Gomes (2024) concerning the dynamical (un)coupling of reference frames to gravity to analyse the role of reference frames in the Hole Argument. We introduce a…
Nicola Bamonti, Henrique GomesDec 27, 2024
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Klippings Ten Commandments
This is a short historical note about the visit of Prof. G. Klipping of Fritz Haber Institute, Germany, to the low temperature physics laboratory of Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. During his…
Bellave S. Shivaram, Usha SinhaDec 26, 2024
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Moving boundaries: An appreciation of John Hopfield
The 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton, "for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks." As noted…
William BialekDec 23, 2024
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Splitting the atom before the atom had been split
The history of the discovery of nuclear fission and how science fiction had anticipated it.
Julyan H. E. CartwrightDec 18, 2024
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The April 1, 2471 b.C. eclipse and the end of 4th Egyptian dynasty
On April 1, 2471 bC an impressive, unpredictable phenomenon occurred over the Delta of the Nile: a total solar eclipse, with totality band almost centered on the sacred city of Buto, and with the…
Giulio MagliDec 18, 2024
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Dark Matter: Explanatory Unification and Historical Continuity
In recent years, the hope to confirm the existence of dark matter by experimentally detecting it has diminished significantly. After more than 30 years of experimental searches, many of the most…
Simon AllzénDec 18, 2024
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