Preliminary notes for the inaugural lecture

Boston Studies in Philosphy and History of Science, 2007

There were two philosophical breakthroughs that were made during the first decades of the 17th century. One was in the theory of knowledge, or epistemology, which was initiated by Francis Bacon. Another breakthrough was made by Galileo Galilei, in the subject of being and becoming, or of metaphysics. What we call science today appears to me to be the fruit of those two remarkable philosophical breakthroughs. I present a case for this claim.

2019

This is the editors' introduction to a new anthology of commissioned articles covering the various branches of philosophy of physics. We introduce the articles in terms of the three pillars of modern physics: relativity theory, quantum theory and thermal physics. We end by discussing the present state, and future prospects, of fundamental physics.

Journal of physics, 2022

Since it started about three centuries ago, theoretical physics went through a huge advancement and, particularly in the last century, the development was material. Its application to engineering brought a massive revolution in the way we humanity live now. Its interpretation opened up astoundingly deep understanding of our universe. One important research activity for the future is to further develop our theories and to further deepen our understanding of the universe. However, as Tomonaga said, when we are in a phase of looking for new paradigm, it is important to understand how our current theory was developed. The purpose of this paper is to present a logical and historic study of the conceptual development of theoretical physics. As the field of theoretical physics is so vast, we cannot cover all theories we have now. We will focus on the most fundamental theories of physics. As this field of physics is as deep and intricate as pure mathematics, if not more, it will be helpful to compare our challenge with that pure mathematicians are facing in the field of the foundations of mathematics. Such common ground will inevitably lead us to deeper philosophical issues. After all what we call physics started with Newton who developed both calculus and dynamics. He called it not physics but natural philosophy. So, it is naturally expected that philosophy, mathematics and theoretical physics develop hand in hand. It has been about a century since these fields started to develop separately and it is about time to restart the original interaction between these three intrinsic intellectual activities. Certainly this will help our timely search for a new paradigm. We must move forward.

Academia.Edu (© R. Schleyer, M.A.), 2023

A brilliant mid-20th c. work of philology is summarized and annotated to show how Plato in effect founded the Special Theory of Relativity. His many-faceted concept of the "Receptacle" is equivalent to modernity's deepest physical conceptualization--the immaterial Color Vacuum--as a description of the inward-most nucleonic ground of physical reality. Plato's construction of Absolute Physics reappeared centuries later in Plotinus, another Greek, whose ruminations on the physics of matter can be understood have founded Heisenberg Indeterminacy (and therefore quantum field theory). Plato's physics reemerged still later in "the platonic successor" Proclus, whose sketch of the cosmic Negative Unity is shown to be the actual foundation of the 21st c. microphysics of "entanglement" (Nobel Prize, 2022). Supplemented with a glossary and supported by appendices on idealist physics in the 19th c. and on physical understanding in Greek mythology. Illustrated.

Cambridge History of Philosophy of the Scientific Revolution, 2022

Berkeley Scientific Journal, 2022

Crítica, 2021

This is the introduction to the special issue of Crítica on the metaphysics of physics, featuring papers by Valia Allori, Tim Maudlin and Gustavo Esteban Romero.