Skip to content

History and Philosophy of Physics papers — page 7

physics.hist-phBrowse archive

Making Symmetry Explicit: The Limits of Sophistication
Symmetry is often treated in philosophy of physics as an interpretive problem. A particularly lively dispute concerns local symmetries: do they indicate surplus structure that ought to be expunged,…
Henrique GomesFeb 14, 2026
Learn
Scale Invariance, Variety and Central Configurations
Scale invariance has received very little attention in physics. Nevertheless, it provides a natural conceptual foundation for a relational understanding of the universe, where absolute size loses…
Maria I. R. Lourenço, Julian Barbour, Francisco S. N. LoboFeb 11, 2026
Learn
Between equilibrium and fluctuation: Einstein's heuristic argument and Boltzmann's principle
We critically revisit Einstein's 1905 heuristic argument for lightquanta, considering its internal coherence and the scope of its applicability. We argue that Einstein's reasoning, often…
Enric Pérez, Antonio GilFeb 11, 2026
Learn
Historical Debates over the Physical Reality of the Wave Function
This paper provides a detailed and unified historical account of early debates over wave-function realism, the modern term for the view that the wave function of quantum theory is physically real. As…
Jacob A. BarandesFeb 10, 2026
Learn
Dark Matter in Zwicky's Cosmology: Towards an Epistemological Reconstruction
A new contextualised reading of Fritz Zwicky's 1933 article ''The redshift of extragalactic nebulae'' about the virial analysis of the velocity dispersion of galaxies in the Coma…
Simon Beyne, Christian MarinoniFeb 9, 2026
Learn
Spacetime singularities and incompleteness: epistemic and ontological remarks
I argue that spacetime singularities entail no ontological commitment to material entities. First, I show that Penrose's singularity theorem is best understood as a theorem of incompleteness, it…
Gustavo E. RomeroFeb 9, 2026
Learn
Intereses convergentes: los años previos a la visita de Einstein a la Argentina en 1925
We analyze in some detail the years leading up to Albert Einstein's visit to Argentina, from the moment he rose to fame after the publication of the results of the 1919 solar eclipse, until his…
Alejandro GanguiFeb 4, 2026
Learn
From Florence to Fermions: a historical reconstruction of the origins of Fermi's statistics one hundred years later
Aim of this paper is to retrace the path that led the young Enrico Fermi to write his paper on the statistics of an ideal monatomic gas. This discovery originated in his interest, which he had shown…
Roberto Casalbuoni, Daniele DominiciFeb 4, 2026
Learn
Todos estos edificios se hacen de diverso modo que en Europa: Estudio arqueoastronómico de las iglesias jesuíticas de Chiquitos
The study of the spatial layout of Christian churches has been of great interest since late Antiquity and the beginning of the Early Middle Ages, and has received a new impetus in recent literature…
Alejandro GanguiFeb 1, 2026
Learn
The Beta-Bound: Drift constraints for Gated Quantum Probabilities
Quantum mechanics provides extraordinarily accurate probabilistic predictions, yet the framework remains silent on what distinguishes quantum systems from definite measurement outcomes. This paper…
Jonathon SendallJan 29, 2026
Learn
Putting Pressure Under Pressure: On the Status of Classical Pressure in Special Relativity
Much of the century-old debate surrounding the status of thermodynamics in relativity has centered on the search for a suitably relativistic temperature; recent works by Chua (2023) and Chua and…
Eugene Y. S. ChuaJan 29, 2026
Learn
Recovering Einstein Mature View of Gravitation: A Dynamical Reconstruction Grounded in the Equivalence Principle
The historical and conceptual foundations of General Relativity are revisited, putting the main focus on the physical meaning of the invariant ds, the Equivalence Principle, and the precise…
Jaume de Haro, Emilio ElizaldeJan 22, 2026
Learn
Determination of the longitude difference between Baghdad and Khwarezm using a lunar eclipse (the method of Abu Rayhan al-Biruni and Abu al-Wafa al-Buzjani)
This paper examines how, in the tenth century, medieval Iranian scholars Abu Rayhan al-Biruni and Abu al-Wafa al-Buzjani determined the difference in geographical longitude between the cities of…
Rizoi BakhromzodJan 22, 2026
Learn
Gatekeeping: a Partial History of Cold Fusion
One of the most public episodes of gatekeeping in modern science was the case of so-called 'cold fusion'. At a news conference in 1989 the electrochemists Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons…
Jonah F Messinger, Florian Metzler, Huw PriceJan 15, 2026
Learn
Astronomy in the Islamic World: a European Perspective
Mathematical and astronomical achievements of the Islamic World during its golden era are briefly exposed. Thie article is based on the invited talk delivered remotely at the ICRANet-Isfahan…
Richard KernerJan 14, 2026
Learn
Viewpoint: On the Emergence of van der Waals Magnets: A Personal Reflection
The observation of magnetism in atomically thin van der Waals (vdW) antiferromagnets (FePS3, NiPS3, and MnPS3) in 2016 marked an important moment in the development of two-dimensional (2D)…
Je-Geun ParkJan 14, 2026
Learn
Wave Function Realism and the Mathematization of Nature. A Phenomenological Perspective
This chapter reexamines wave function realism (WFR) through the lens of phenomenology. We begin by situating WFR within the broader debate about the ontology of the quantum state and the temptation…
Philipp Berghofer, Harald A. WiltscheJan 10, 2026
Learn
Tractatus de Conscientia: A Tractatus-Style Sketch Toward a Modern, Physically Operational Theory of Consciousness
Tractatus de Conscientia is a tractatus-style sketch toward a modern, physically operational account of consciousness. It is also a tractatus-style attempt to talk about consciousness in a way that…
Mikołaj Sienicki, Krzysztof SienickiJan 3, 2026
Learn
The Physics of Causation
Assembly theory (AT) introduces causation as a material property and establishes a metrology for objects produced by evolution and selection. The physical scale of causation is quantified by the…
Leroy Cronin, Sara I. WalkerJan 2, 2026
Learn
From Grounding to Stabilisation: Adequacy as a Criterion for Scientific Explanation
This paper develops a process-based account of scientific explanation that reconceives grounding in terms of stabilisation. Grounding theories capture hierarchical dependence but lack criteria for…
Jonathon SendallJan 1, 2026
Learn
The Logical Structure of Physical Laws: A Fixed Point Reconstruction
We formalise the self-referential definition of physical laws using monotone operators on a lattice of theories, resolving the pathologies of naive set-theoretic formulations. By invoking Tarski…
Eren Volkan KüçükDec 31, 2025
Learn
Event Horizons, Spacetime Geometry, and the Limits of Integrated Consciousness
What happens to a unified conscious field when its physical implementation straddles a black hole event horizon? This paper addresses that question for integration-based theories, including…
Jonathon SendallDec 28, 2025
Learn
On Huygens' derivation of the laws of elastic collisions
In this note I sketch the work of Christiaan Huygens to develop a theory of motion and its application to elastic collisions. In this theory he uses the relativity of uniform linear motion to derive…
Jan-Willem van HoltenDec 28, 2025
Learn
Determinism and Indeterminism as Model Artefacts: Toward a Model-Invariant Ontology of Physics
This paper argues that, where deterministic and indeterministic formulations agree on empirically corroborated structure while differing in their completion of structure that remains empirically…
David NollandDec 27, 2025
Learn
Actual Physics, Observation, and Quantum Theory
Since its inception, quantum theory has been the subject of fierce interpretive controversy, which persists to this day. Disputed topics include the basic ontology and dynamics of the theory, the…
Tim MaudlinDec 27, 2025
Learn
← PreviousPage 7Next →