This double interview with two distinguished researchers in computational neuroscience, Kanaka Ra... more This double interview with two distinguished researchers in computational neuroscience, Kanaka Rajan and Alessandro Treves, aims to capture a part of their talks and discussions that emerged during a workshop on physical modelling of thought, held in Berlin in January 2023. The topic is the fascinating all-round intersection of physics and neuroscience through the perspectives of the interviewees. The dialogue traverses the complex terrain of modelling thought processes, shedding light on the trade-off between simplicity and complexity that defines the field of computational neuroscience. From the early days of physics-inspired brain models to the cutting-edge advancements in large language models, the interviewees share their journey, challenges, and insights into the modelling of physical and biological systems; they recount their experience with computational neuroscience, explore the impact of large language models on our understanding of human language and cognition, and speculate on the future directions of physics-inspired computational neuroscience, emphasising the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration and a deeper integration of complexity and detail in modelling the brain and its functions.
The debate around analogy in modern physics that focuses on its role as a logical inference often... more The debate around analogy in modern physics that focuses on its role as a logical inference often correspondingly overlooks its historical dimension and the other equally important functions and aspects that are intertwined with this dimension. Inspired by a close investigation of the primary sources and archival material of a few historical actors, this paper lays out a framework on analogy-making which preserves as much as possible its historical complexity. While not losing sight of the logical role, our framework puts a special emphasis on the heuristic process, and aims at offering to the historian and philosopher of science as well as the physicist some tools to capture the subtle functions of analogical reasoning involved in such a process. After having traced it out theoretically, we make use of this framework to interpret the growth of the ideas of two remarkable physicists dealing with the multifaceted notion of vacuum in 20th century physics. We first consider the trajectory followed by John A. Wheeler, between the 1960s and 1970s, towards (in his own words) a "geology of the vacuum"; and then examine, starting from the hitherto neglected Japanese reception of the idea of Dirac sea in the early 1930s, the pathway that led Yoichiro Nambu to the discovery of spontaneous symmetry breaking.
This double interview with two distinguished researchers in computational neuroscience, Kanaka Ra... more This double interview with two distinguished researchers in computational neuroscience, Kanaka Rajan and Alessandro Treves, aims to capture a part of their talks and discussions that emerged during a workshop on physical modelling of thought, held in Berlin in January 2023. The topic is the fascinating all-round intersection of physics and neuroscience through the perspectives of the interviewees. The dialogue traverses the complex terrain of modelling thought processes, shedding light on the trade-off between simplicity and complexity that defines the field of computational neuroscience. From the early days of physics-inspired brain models to the cutting-edge advancements in large language models, the interviewees share their journey, challenges, and insights into the modelling of physical and biological systems; they recount their experience with computational neuroscience, explore the impact of large language models on our understanding of human language and cognition, and speculate on the future directions of physics-inspired computational neuroscience, emphasising the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration and a deeper integration of complexity and detail in modelling the brain and its functions.
The debate around analogy in modern physics that focuses on its role as a logical inference often... more The debate around analogy in modern physics that focuses on its role as a logical inference often correspondingly overlooks its historical dimension and the other equally important functions and aspects that are intertwined with this dimension. Inspired by a close investigation of the primary sources and archival material of a few historical actors, this paper lays out a framework on analogy-making which preserves as much as possible its historical complexity. While not losing sight of the logical role, our framework puts a special emphasis on the heuristic process, and aims at offering to the historian and philosopher of science as well as the physicist some tools to capture the subtle functions of analogical reasoning involved in such a process. After having traced it out theoretically, we make use of this framework to interpret the growth of the ideas of two remarkable physicists dealing with the multifaceted notion of vacuum in 20th century physics. We first consider the trajectory followed by John A. Wheeler, between the 1960s and 1970s, towards (in his own words) a "geology of the vacuum"; and then examine, starting from the hitherto neglected Japanese reception of the idea of Dirac sea in the early 1930s, the pathway that led Yoichiro Nambu to the discovery of spontaneous symmetry breaking.
Uploads
Papers by Rocco Gaudenzi