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History and Philosophy of Physics papers — page 2

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Ghosts that Connect
The Faddeev--Popov procedure poses two conceptual puzzles. Puzzle~(1): if gauge-equivalent configurations represent the same physics, the quotient / should suffice to compute physical…
Henrique GomesJul 29, 2026
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The Development of Detectors of High Energy Neutrinos and Cosmic Rays between 1980 and 2000
The construction of the DUMAND, Lake Baikal and IceCube detectors of high-energy neutrinos are discussed, with some emphasis on the difficulties encountered. The decade from 1990 marked the period in…
A A WatsonJul 28, 2026
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The geometry-first formulation of gauge theory is not equivalent to the symmetry-first one
This paper argues that the geometry-first and symmetry-first formulations of gauge theory are not equivalent. They differ in three respects. First, the geometry-first formulation---in which gauge…
Henrique GomesJul 27, 2026
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Dimensional Analysis is a Gauge Theory
I argue that dimensional analysis can appropriately be thought of as a gauge theory. This picture naturally leads to the usual quantity calculus through inherent properties of Lie groups, Lie…
Benjamin MuntzJul 23, 2026
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Quantum nature of gravity and spacetime: Fundamental insights from the Hoyle-Narlikar theory
The Hoyle-Narlikar action-at-a-distance formulation for gravity remains one of the most mathematically rigorous attempts to incorporate Mach principle into physics. A lesser known, but no less…
Dawood KothawalaJul 22, 2026
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What Price Fiber Bundle Substantivalism? On How to Avoid Holes in Fibers
On a mathematically foundational level, our most successful physical theories (gauge field theories and general-relativistic theories) are formulated in a framework based on the differential geometry…
Philipp Berghofer, Jordan François, Lucrezia RaveraJul 21, 2026
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The History of Hilbert-Space Formulations of Classical Physics
Hilbert-space techniques are widely used not only for quantum theory, but also for classical physics. Two important examples are the Koopman-von Neumann (KvN) formulation and the method of…
Jacob A. BarandesJul 19, 2026
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Particle accelerators as a path to intergovernmental collaboration: the case of the first electron positron collider and the power of theoretical physics
I rivisit the history of the first matter-antimatter collider built in Italy in 1960 and carried to success through an inter-European collaboration with France, underlying the foundational role of…
Giulia PancheriJul 18, 2026
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On the detection of absolute velocity in a Newtonian universe
As a fundamental arena for the development of his dynamics, Newton postulated the existence of absolute space, in which bodies innately possess absolute velocity. Despite this, Newton argued that,…
Jorge Manero, Ricardo Muciño, Elias OkonJul 18, 2026
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Realism about the external world: an adversarial collaboration
One of us is a realist and believes that reality fundamentally consists in an external physical world, governed by laws of physics. Observers are either emergent (physicalism) or exist in addition to…
Kelvin J. McQueen, Markus P. MuellerJul 17, 2026
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Theoretical adversarial collaboration: a template
Adversarial collaborations have become increasingly prominent in empirical science, where proponents of competing theories jointly design experiments capable of discriminating between them. Much less…
Kelvin J. McQueen, Markus P. MuellerJul 17, 2026
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Coloring Black Holes: Epistemic and Aesthetic Choices in Astronomical Imaging
In 2019, the first image of a black hole's shadow based on observation was released by the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration (EHT). This paper shows that despite the EHT's emphasis on a…
Rodrigo Ochigame, Emilie Skulberg, Jeroen van DongenJul 16, 2026
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Schrodinger's Wave Mechanics: Remarkable Dates and Place One Hundred Years Ago
We discuss, at a level accessible to a wide audience, including students and teachers of physics and mathematics, the fundamental transition from classical mechanics to wave equations made by…
Sergei K. SuslovJul 16, 2026
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The orientation of the Amazonian geoglyphs as a clue for their interpretation
Amazonian earthworks, also called geoglyphs, are thousands of man-made earthen structures, mostly of geometrical shape, which progressively emerged from the tropical forest due to progressive…
Giulio MagliJul 15, 2026
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Perturbative QCD as a quantitative tool in the years 1976-2000
This paper traces the development of precision QCD in the years 1976-2000.This is after the discovery of asymptotic freedom, and after the exploration of the simplest processes based on the operator…
R Keith EllisJul 15, 2026
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Cosmology: 100 years after A. A. Friedmann
A. A. Friedmann (04.06.1888 -- 16.09.1925) proposed the first physical cosmological models in 1920s. Despite the fact that Friedmann's works were very famous soon after their publication, the…
A. F. ZakharovJul 13, 2026
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The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Physics in Biology
We demonstrate that the system of fine-tuning constraints for life is overdetermined: the number of inequalities is too large relative to the number of free parameters in the chemical sector and…
Alexey Burov, Alexei TsvelikJul 13, 2026
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The Emergence of Astroparticle Physics: From Cosmic-Ray Physics to a new Scientific Field
Astroparticle physics emerged during the late twentieth century as a new interdisciplinary field at the intersection of particle physics, astrophysics, and cosmology. This article examines the…
Luisa BonolisJul 12, 2026
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Spacetime from Entanglement: The Emergence of Metric, Gravity, or Topology
In AdS/CFT, one often finds claims along the lines that ``spacetime emerges from entanglement." This paper argues that behind these general statements hide three distinct emergence claims about,…
Rasmus JakslandJul 10, 2026
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The New Tractatus Program: Quantum Mechanics, Anti-Totalitarian Ontology, and Consciousness
This article reads two recent tractatus-style texts - Niccolo Covoni and Carlo Rovelli's Tractatus Quanticus (arXiv:2512.06034) and Mikolaj Sienicki and Krzysztof Sienicki's Tractatus de…
Mikołaj Sienicki, Krzysztof SienickiJul 10, 2026
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Henri Poincare Saint Louis Lecture of 1904: Publication, Dissemination, and Historiographical Implications
Henri Poincare Saint Louis lecture of 1904 occupies an important place in the prehistory of relativity. In it, Poincare formulated the principle of relativity in general terms and presented it as one…
Hector GiacominiJul 10, 2026
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The influence of the Academy of Gondishapur on the formation of the House of Wisdom in Baghdad and the science of the Golden Age of Islam
The purpose of this study is to determine the role of the Academy of Gondishapur in the formation of the Bayt al-Hikma (House of Wisdom) in Baghdad and the emergence of Islamic science in the…
Rizoi BakhromzodJul 3, 2026
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Becoming, Duration, and the Evolving Block Universe
The two-times problem asks how the directed, oriented time of biological and conscious systems relates to the time of fundamental physics. The Evolving Block Universe, in which spacetime grows along…
Nicolò CangiottiJul 3, 2026
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Black Boxes in Black Hole Imaging
We investigate the epistemic opacity of computer simulations and machine learning methods in the context of black hole imaging. We argue that there are forms of opacity-including opacity resulting…
Juliusz Doboszewski, Jamee ElderJul 2, 2026
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Emergence: from physics to biology, sociology, and computer science
Many systems involve numerous interacting parts and the whole system can have properties that the individual parts do not. I take this novelty as the defining characteristic of an emergent property.…
Ross H. McKenzieJul 2, 2026
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