Bridging the Gap: Philosophy, Mathematics, and Physics PDF Download

Author: Giovanna Corsi
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9780792317616
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
Foundational questions in logic, mathematics, computer science and physics are constant sources of epistemological debate in contemporary philosophy. To what extent is the transfinite part of mathematics completely trustworthy? Why is there a general malaise' concerning the logical approach to the foundations of mathematics? What is the role of symmetry in physics? Is it possible to build a coherent worldview compatible with a macroobjectivistic position and based on the quantum picture of the world? What account can be given of opinion change in the light of new evidence? These are some of the questions discussed in this volume, which collects 14 lectures on the foundation of science given at the School of Philosophy of Science, Trieste, October 1989. The volume will be of particular interest to any student or scholar engaged in interdisciplinary research into the foundations of science in the context of contemporary debates.

Author: G. Corsi
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401124965
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
Foundational questions in logic, mathematics, computer science and physics are constant sources of epistemological debate in contemporary philosophy. To what extent is the transfinite part of mathematics completely trustworthy? Why is there a general `malaise' concerning the logical approach to the foundations of mathematics? What is the role of symmetry in physics? Is it possible to build a coherent worldview compatible with a macroobjectivistic position and based on the quantum picture of the world? What account can be given of opinion change in the light of new evidence? These are some of the questions discussed in this volume, which collects 14 lectures on the foundation of science given at the School of Philosophy of Science, Trieste, October 1989. The volume will be of particular interest to any student or scholar engaged in interdisciplinary research into the foundations of science in the context of contemporary debates.

Author: Devin Henry
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107010365
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
Explores the extent to which Aristotle's ethical treatises employ the concepts, methods, and practices developed in his 'scientific' works.

Author: Maria Luisa Dalla Chiara
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401705267
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
"Is quantum logic really logic?" This book argues for a positive answer to this question once and for all. There are many quantum logics and their structures are delightfully varied. The most radical aspect of quantum reasoning is reflected in unsharp quantum logics, a special heterodox branch of fuzzy thinking. For the first time, the whole story of Quantum Logic is told; from its beginnings to the most recent logical investigations of various types of quantum phenomena, including quantum computation. Reasoning in Quantum Theory is designed for logicians, yet amenable to advanced graduate students and researchers of other disciplines.

Author: Diederik Aerts
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 981314629X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 371

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Book Description
This book provides an interdisciplinary approach to one of the most fascinating and important open questions in science: What is quantum mechanics really talking about? In the last decades quantum mechanics has given rise to a new quantum technological era, a revolution taking place today especially within the field of quantum information processing; which goes from quantum teleportation and cryptography to quantum computation. Quantum theory is probably our best confirmed physical theory. However, in spite of its great empirical effectiveness it stands today still without a universally accepted physical representation that allows us to understand its relation to the world and reality.The novelty of the book comes from the multiple perspectives put forward by top researchers in quantum mechanics, from Europe as well as North and South America, discussing the meaning and structure of the theory of quanta. The book comprises in a balanced manner physical, philosophical, logical and mathematical approaches to quantum mechanics and quantum information. Going from quantum superpositions and entanglement to dynamics and the problem of identity; from quantum logic, computation and quasi-set theory to the category approach and teleportation; from realism and empiricism to operationalism and instrumentalism; the book considers from different angles some of the most intriguing questions in the field.From Buenos Aires to Brussels and Cagliari, from Florence to Florianópolis, the interaction between different groups is reflected in the many different articles. This book is interesting not only to the specialists but also to the general public attempting to get a grasp on some of the most fundamental questions of present quantum physics.

Author: Ludwig Boltzmann
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9780792332312
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
This book gives the first detailed record of Ludwig Boltzmann's life and philosophical thoughts during his final years, a period of major change in physics, needing a new methodology of theoretical, idealized science. The growing primacy of physical theory over observation and experimentation meant that Boltzmann needed a methodology which went beyond Ernst Mach's phenomenalism and theory of economy. The documentary approach of this book means that historians, philosophers, and physicists can use it as a source and foundation for better understanding the development of quantum and relativity theory, the new advances in methodology, and as an aid in improving or creating their own contributions to methodology and philosophy of science. Seeds of future linguistic philosophy are also present.

Author: Léna Soler
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1402062796
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 379

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Book Description
This volume presents a collection of essays devoted to the analysis of scientific change and stability. It explores the balance and tension that exist between commensurability and continuity on the one hand and incommensurability and discontinuity on the other. The book constitutes fully revised versions of papers that were originally presented at an international colloquium held at the University of Nancy, France, in June 2004.

Author: Michael Bitbol
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400917724
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
This book is the final outcome of two projects. My first project was to publish a set of texts written by Schrodinger at the beginning of the 1950's for his seminars and lectures at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. These almost completely forgotten texts contained important insights into the interpretation of quantum mechanics, and they provided several ideas which were missing or elusively expressed in SchrOdinger's published papers and books of the same period. However, they were likely to be misinterpreted out of their context. The problem was that current scholarship could not help very much the reader of these writings to figure out their significance. The few available studies about SchrOdinger's interpretation of quantum mechanics are generally excellent, but almost entirely restricted to the initial period 1925-1927. Very little work has been done on Schrodinger's late views on the theory he contributed to create and develop. The generally accepted view is that he never really recovered from his interpretative failure of 1926-1927, and that his late reflections (during the 1950's) are little more than an expression of his rising nostalgia for the lost ideal of picturing the world, not to say for some favourite traditional picture. But the content and style of Schrodinger's texts of the 1950's do not agree at all with this melancholic appraisal; they rather set the stage for a thorough renewal of accepted representations. In order to elucidate this paradox, I adopted several strategies.

Author: J.T. Cushing
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401587159
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 406

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Book Description
We are often told that quantum phenomena demand radical revisions of our scientific world view and that no physical theory describing well defined objects, such as particles described by their positions, evolving in a well defined way, let alone deterministically, can account for such phenomena. The great majority of physicists continue to subscribe to this view, despite the fact that just such a deterministic theory, accounting for all of the phe nomena of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics, was proposed by David Bohm more than four decades ago and has arguably been around almost since the inception of quantum mechanics itself. Our purpose in asking colleagues to write the essays for this volume has not been to produce a Festschrift in honor of David Bohm (worthy an undertaking as that would have been) or to gather together a collection of papers simply stating uncritically Bohm's views on quantum mechanics. The central theme around which the essays in this volume are arranged is David Bohm's version of quantum mechanics. It has by now become fairly standard practice to refer to his theory as Bohmian mechanics and to the larger conceptual framework within which this is located as the causal quantum theory program. While it is true that one can have reservations about the appropriateness of these specific labels, both do elicit distinc tive images characteristic of the key concepts of these approaches and such terminology does serve effectively to contrast this class of theories with more standard formulations of quantum theory.

Author: J. Faye
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401581061
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 403

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Book Description
Since the Niels Bohr centenary of 1985 there has been an astonishing international surge of scholarly analyses of Bohr's philosophy. Now for the first time in Niels Bohr and Contemporary Philosophy Jan Faye and Henry Folse have brought together sixteen of today's leading authors who have helped mould this new round of discussions on Bohr's philosophy. In fifteen entirely new, previously unpublished essays we discover a surprising variety of the different facets of Bohr as the natural philosopher whose `framework of complementarity' shaped the final phase of the quantum revolution and influenced two generations of the century's leading physicists. There is much on which the authors included here agree; but there are also polar disagreements, which assure us that the philosophical questions revolving around Bohr's `new viewpoint' will continue to be a subject of scholarly interest and discussion for years to come. This collection will interest all serious students of history and philosophy of science, and foundations of physics.