Absolute Physics in Historical Context

2019

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.

Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, 2008

The late 19th century debate among German-speaking physicists about theoretical entities is often regarded as foreshadowing the scientific realism debate. This paper brings out differences between them by concentrating on the part of the earlier debate that was concerned with the conceptual consistency of the competing conceptions of matter—mainly, but not exclusively, of atomism. Philosophical antinomies of atomism were taken up by Emil Du Bois-Reymond in an influential lecture in 1872. Such challenges to the consistency of atomism had repercussions within the physics community, as can be shown for the examples of Heinrich Hertz and Ludwig Boltzmann. The latter developed a series of counter-arguments, culminating in an ingenious attempt to turn the tables on the critics of atomism and prove the inconsistency of non-atomistic conceptions of nature. Underlying this controversy is a disagreement over specific goals of physical research which was considered crucially relevant to the further course of physical inquiry. It thereby exemplifies an attitude towards the realism issue that can be contrasted with a different, more neutral attitude of construing the realism issue as merely philosophical and indifferent with respect to concrete research programs in physics, which one also occasionally finds expressed in the 19th century controversy and which may be seen as the prevailing attitude of the 20th century debate.

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.

American Journal of Physics

A book titled "MASS" promises all sorts of conceptual delights, and so I came to this work with great expectations. The concept of mass, though central to most, if not all of physics, is exquisitely subtle and still evolving. Anyone bold enough to take on the task of explaining the as yet unexplained deserves encouragement. Alas, I must apologize to the author, Jim Baggott, at the outset; having read the book twice in whole, and several times in part, I remain somewhat disappointed. Readers of AJP know and enjoy physics, and like me, no doubt come to a popularization expecting to find something insightful, perhaps some fresh explanation, or a novel synthesis, possibly a new perspective, or even an elegant historical account, but above all such a book must be scrupulously accurate. This book-i.e., at least its first 110 pages or so-seems not to have been written for the informed AJP subscriber. "MASS" has a friendly light style, even while admirably attempting to explain concepts that are extremely subtle and complex, such as general relativity and quantum field theory. Unfortunately, it too often rather casually says things about physics that are not rigorously true; if you are a reader of AJP those little lapses will be quite jarring. One thing seems certain, this book was neither written nor edited by a physics teacher. On the strikingly handsome black dust jacket the book proclaims itself to be about MASS, but the easily missed small-print subtitle, "The quest to understand matter from Greek atoms to quantum fields," is much closer to its true overly ambitious intent. The treatment begins under the banner of "ATOMS AND VOID" with the oftenirrelevant notions of the usual collection of ancient Greek scholars. The next chapter wanders around dropping names like Sixtus IV, Gutenberg, Spinoza, and Bruno; I love Giordano Bruno, he's one of my heroes, but not here in a book that's supposed to be about MASS. Continuing this aimless historical meandering, the author lists "mechanical philosophers" from Bacon to Descartes to Newton, (p. 21) inexplicably overlooking two pivotal figures, Isaac Beeckman (from whom Descartes learned what meaningful physics he had) and the great Robert Hooke. It is not until Chapter 3 that the word mass finally appears, and then it's done by quoting Newton's awkward Definition 1, from the Principia, as if this is when the concept first entered physics-it is not. Baggott paraphrases Newton: "So, an object has a certain intrinsic mass-the 'quantity of matter' in it-which is related

Journal of Advanced Studies in Topology

The basic pillars of physics, namely classical mechanics, quantum mechanics and theory of relativity are taught in colleges all over the country. It is the experience of the author and many others that the concepts are difficult for many students to follow, not only because they are involved, but also due to the absence of a non-mathematical treatment. In this article, I have attempted to explain all the concepts in the form of a fantastic story, set in an ancient Greece of my imagination.

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.

Platonic Investigations, 2022

In his Physica, Aristoteles introduced several terms to describe geometrical entities and their properties, such as 'continuous', 'divisible' and 'indivisible', in order to explain the nature of space, motion, and time. Proclus, in his Institutio physica, summarises Aristotelian propositions and their proofs and gives a comprehensive description of mathematical objects using the same language, which he used to describe metaphysical entities in his other works. It appears that Aristotelean physics and Platonic metaphysics have common points, at least from the standpoint of the terms used. Actually, this similarity appears to be more than purely linguistic. The concept of divisibility / indivisibility is widely used to distinguish properties of the intelligible and sensible realms. Another term, synechēs, is used both to describe the spatial continuum (and continuous objects) and the capability of intelligibles to 'hold themselves together' and, further, to be spread over material objects in a non-spatial and nonextensive manner. Despite the significant difference between these meanings, Proclus has a common philosophical ground for them, and thus it becomes possible to 'bridge' physics and metaphysics. The reported study considers two ways of such 'bridging': a 'downward' path from metaphysics to geometry, and an opposite 'upward' path, from geometry to metaphysics. A symbolical method of connecting the two is proposed as the most appropriate to Proclean theurgic philosophy.

From Physics to Metaphysics, 2010

Although the description just given is meant to apply to a whole series of thinkers in the West, it fits the position of our opening thinker, Plato, with alarming accuracy. Plato inherited a rich tradition of natural philosophy developed during the pre-Socratic period. Numerous philosophers had developed divergent accounts of what could be the arché or ultimate principle,