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History and Philosophy of Physics papers — page 9

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Lorentz, Poincar\'e, and Einstein: Rethinking Doppler, Aberration, and the Fresnel Drag
This paper examines Lorentz's 1895 derivations of the classical Doppler formula and Fresnel drag, Einstein's 1905 derivation of the relativistic Doppler effect and aberration, and Einstein's 1907…
Galina WeinsteinSep 30, 2025
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Charge quantisation without compactness: the Higgs and Yukawa mechanisms from matter geometry
In the geometry-first formulation of gauge theory Gomesinternal, Hermitian vector bundles and their covariant derivatives are the primitive objects. Here gauge groups arise only as…
Henrique GomesSep 28, 2025
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Naturalistic intuitionism for physics
Recently, a novel intuitionistic reconstruction of the foundations of physics has been primarily developed by Nicolas Gisin and Flavio Del Santo drawing on naturalism. Our goal in this paper is to…
Bruno Bentzen, Flavio Del Santo, Nicolas GisinSep 26, 2025
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On functional freedom and Penrose's critiques of string theory
In his The Road to Reality as well as in his Fashion, Faith and Fantasy, Roger Penrose criticises string theory and its practitioners from a variety of angles ranging from conceptual, technical, and…
Matěj Krátký, James ReadSep 25, 2025
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Is string field theory background independent?
String field theory is supposed to stand to perturbative string theory as quantum field theory stands to single-particle quantum theory; as such, it purports to offer a substantially more general and…
Bhanu Narra, James Read, Matěj KrátkýSep 25, 2025
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Comments on Weinstein's comments arXiv: 2509.09361 & 2510.03793
In 2024, after thirty years of research on this subject, I published a book entitled: Poincar\'e, Einstein and the discovery of special relativity. An end to the controversy…
Jean-Marc GinouxSep 25, 2025
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The Aharonov-Bohm effect: reality and folklore
The Aharonov-Bohm (A-B) effect has been a major focus of the foundations of physics. And yet, much confusion persists. In particular, the effect purportedly leads to a dilemma: on one horn, we have a…
Henrique GomesSep 23, 2025
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Chaotic interaction between thermodynamic systems
In previous study [1], we proposed a new physical law applicable to both particle and thermodynamical systems. Additionally, we introduced a physical definition of chaos and self-organization. In the…
E. AydinerSep 19, 2025
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Dualities in Physics
For more than half a century, dualities have been at the heart of modern physics. From quantum mechanics to statistical mechanics, condensed matter physics, quantum field theory and quantum gravity,…
Sebastian De Haro, Enrico CintiSep 19, 2025
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Der Stern von Bethlehem -- Einige Theorien und Hintergruende: Von der altorientalischen Astrologie ueber Kepler zu Newton
Many have have taken in hand to write a treatise on the Star of Bethlehem, particularly on Kepler's explanation as a stellar birth, triggered by Mars joining a great conjunction (a meeting of Jupiter…
Stephan F. HuckemannSep 18, 2025
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Gauge symmetry and the arrow of time: How to count what counts
This thesis addresses two major problems in the philosophy of physics. The first is how to identify the minimal physical content of a theory; that is, what features of a theory are truly needed to…
Sean GrybSep 18, 2025
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How are Scientific Concepts Birthed? Typing Rules of Concept Formation in Theoretical Physics Reasoning
This work aims to formalize some of the ways scientific concepts are formed in the process of theoretical physics discovery. Since this may at first seem like a task beyond the scope of the exact…
Omar Aguilar, Anthony AguirreSep 12, 2025
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The Rapid Arrival of Josiah Willard Gibbs's Elementary Principles in Statistical Mechanics in European University Libraries
This note offers an overview of how Josiah Willard Gibbs's Elementary Principles in Statistical Mechanics, published simultaneously in London and New York in 1902, spread through European university…
Hector GiacominiSep 12, 2025
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Convergences and Divergences: Einstein, Poincar\'e, and Special Relativity
Jean-Marc Ginoux's recent book, "Poincar\'e, Einstein and the Discovery of Special Relativity: An End to the Controversy" (2024), seeks to close the debate over the respective roles of Poincar\'e and…
Galina WeinsteinSep 11, 2025
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A.P. Balachandran: Living in Physics
A.P. Balachandran was a theoretical physicist of extraordinary versatility and originality. In a career spanning over six decades, he made many significant contributions to quantum field theory and…
V. P. NairSep 7, 2025
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Holistic Versus Fragmented Multiverses: Empirical Access via Causal and Grounding Signatures
Can multiverse hypotheses ever receive empirical support? Critics argue that multiverse scenarios posit unobservable entities, face severe underdetermination, or fall outside the bounds of science.…
Baptiste Le BihanSep 5, 2025
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Einstein's Hidden Scaffolding, with a Glance at Poincar\'e
This paper reconstructs the derivations underlying the kinematical part of Einstein's 1905 special relativity paper, emphasizing their operational clarity and minimalist use of mathematics. Einstein…
Galina WeinsteinSep 2, 2025
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Un avenir commun au sein de la soci\'et\'e num\'erique
Today, data and information have become overabundant resources within a global network of machines that exchange signals at speeds approaching that of light. In this highly saturated environment,…
Miguel VanvlasselaerAug 31, 2025
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From Faraday and Maxwell to Quantum Physics. The later story of the Electromagnetic Vector Potential
With the advent of quantum mechanics by Heisenberg in 1925 exactly a century ago, the quantization of the electromagnetic field became an important goal for our founding fathers, whom we are here to…
Tuck Choy, Miguel OrtunoAug 31, 2025
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Origins of the Ising model
In 1925, Ernest Ising published a paper analyzing a model proposed in 1920 by Wilhelm Lenz for ferromagnetism. The model is composed of constituent units that take only two states and interact only…
Mário J. de OliveiraAug 30, 2025
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English translation of the paper "Electromagnetic field inside a plane-parallel layer in the resonant absorption regime" (1962) by A. P. Khapalyuk: Pioneering study on coherent perfect absorption
In 1962, Belarusian physicist A. P. Khapalyuk has published the paper [Doklady Akademii nauk BSSR, volume 6, issue 5, pages 301-304] devoted to the effect of resonant absorption of light in a layer…
Denis V. NovitskyAug 27, 2025
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Reflections of Sadi Carnot
The Carnot theory is unique among the theories of heat developed before the emergence of thermodynamics because it considers the relationship between heat and work. The theory is contained in…
Mário José de OliveiraAug 23, 2025
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Between Myth and History: von Neumann on Consciousness in Quantum Mechanics
The von Neumann attitude on such a deep interpretational question as the role of a human observer in order for the quantum description of measurement to be consistent has been long misrepresented.…
Federico LaudisaAug 21, 2025
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A Theory of the Big Bang in McTaggart's Time
There are long standing questions about the Big Bang What were its properties? Was there nothing before it? Was the universe always here? Many conceptual issues revolve around time. This paper gives…
Paul MerriamAug 20, 2025
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Remarks on the Fundamentals of Time oder die Zeitd\"ammerung
This paper argues that the common identification of time with entropy is a category error. Entropy accounts for the arrow of time but not for time itself. Even in a maximally entropic universe the so…
Joseph S. FinbergAug 19, 2025
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