Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
David Glick
Keyword(s):  
Central Place ◽  
Philosophy Of Physics ◽  
Fundamental Physics ◽  
The Status ◽  
Point Of Intersection ◽  
Complete Account

In recent years, fundamentality and emergence have come to occupy a central place in both metaphysics and the philosophy of physics. Many metaphysicians now think that, in giving a complete account of reality, saying what exists is only part of the story—we also need to say how everything “hangs together.” Meanwhile, philosophers of physics have begun to appreciate that much of physics—including current so-called “fundamental physics”—in fact concerns effective or emergent levels. A point of intersection between these two areas is the status of spacetime. Is it possible that spacetime itself is non-fundamental? What would this mean for our understanding of reality?...

scholarly journals Cosmic-Ray Extremely Distributed Observatory: Status and Perspectives

Universe ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (11) ◽  
pp. 111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dariusz Góra
Keyword(s):  
Time Window ◽  
Cosmic Ray ◽  
Small Time ◽  
Global Studies ◽  
Active Engagement ◽  
Air Showers ◽  
Fundamental Physics ◽  
Terra Incognita ◽  
The Status ◽  
Worldwide Network

The Cosmic-Ray Extremely Distributed Observatory (CREDO) is a project dedicated to global studies of extremely extended cosmic-ray phenomena, the cosmic-ray ensembles (CRE), beyond the capabilities of existing detectors and observatories. Up to date, cosmic-ray research has been focused on detecting single air showers, while the search for ensembles of cosmic-rays, which may overspread a significant fraction of the Earth, is a scientific terra incognita. Instead of developing and commissioning a completely new global detector infrastructure, CREDO proposes approaching the global cosmic-ray analysis objectives with all types of available detectors, from professional to pocket size, merged into a worldwide network. With such a network it is possible to search for evidences of correlated cosmic-ray ensembles. One of the observables that can be investigated in CREDO is a number of spatially isolated events collected in a small time window which could shed light on fundamental physics issues. The CREDO mission and strategy requires active engagement of a large number of participants, also non-experts, who will contribute to the project by using common electronic devices (e.g., smartphones). In this note, the status and perspectives of the project are presented.

Philosophy of Physics: A Very Short Introduction

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Wallace
Keyword(s):  
Quantum Mechanics ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Philosophy Of Physics ◽  
Short Introduction ◽  
Fundamental Physics ◽  
The Core ◽  
The World ◽  
Modern Physics ◽  
Parallel Universes ◽  
Large Systems

Philosophy of Physics: A Very Short Introduction explores the core topics of philosophy of physics through three key themes: the nature of space and time; the origin of irreversibility and probability in the physics of large systems; how we can make sense of quantum mechanics. Central issues discussed include: the scientific method as it applies in modern physics; the distinction between absolute and relative motion; the way that distinction changes between Newton’s physics and special relativity; what spacetime is and how it relates to the laws of physics; how fundamental physics can make no distinction between past and future and yet a clear distinction exists in the world we see around us; why it is so difficult to understand quantum mechanics, and why doing so might push us to change our fundamental physics, to rethink the nature of science, or even to accept the existence of parallel universes.

Overture for Ants

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Silberstein ◽  
W.M. Stuckey ◽  
Timothy McDevitt
Keyword(s):  
Nobel Laureate ◽  
Physical Reality ◽  
Theoretical Physics ◽  
Philosophy Of Physics ◽  
Fundamental Physics ◽  
Physical Universe ◽  
Foundations Of Physics ◽  
Main Thread ◽  
Block Universe

This book addresses Nobel Laureate Frank Wilczek’s challenge that “ascending from the ant’s-eye view to the God’s-eye view of physical reality is the most profound challenge for fundamental physics in the next 100 years”, by contesting the dynamical universe paradigm in its entirety. Most of the book is devoted to showing that given the adynamical block universe approach called Relational Blockworld, the current impasse of theoretical physics and philosophy/foundations of physics can be resolved, including the mystery of time as experienced and how that experience relates to the physical universe. This chapter sets the scene for the rest of the work, including defining its audience and sketching how each can read the work successfully. It describes the division of each chapter into three parts: a main thread, a thread devoted to the philosophy of physics, and a thread devoted to foundational physics.

The Relevance of Descartes's Philosophy for Modern Philosophy of Science

1963 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerd Buchdahl
Keyword(s):  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Philosophy Of Physics ◽  
World Picture ◽  
The Status ◽  
Snell’S Law ◽  
Snell's Law ◽  
The Ideal

SummaryI. Reputed shortcomings of Descartes as philosopher of science.II ‘Knowledge’ in mathematics and in physics. The ‘ontological’ postulates of Descartes's philosophy and philosophy of physics.III. The ‘foundations of dynamics’: ‘Newton's First Law of Motion’ and its status.IV. Descartes's conception of ‘hypothesis’: the competing claims of the ideal of the a priori in physics and the conception of retroductive inference. (The status of the mechanistic world picture.)V. Descartes's notion of ‘analysis’. The distinction between ‘procedure’ and ‘inference’. The notion of ‘induction’ and ‘understanding through models’: ‘Snell's Law of Refraction’.

Libertarian personal responsibility

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (6) ◽  
pp. 621-645 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua Preiss
Keyword(s):  
Personal Responsibility ◽  
Economic Status ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
The Core ◽  
Social Bases ◽  
The Status ◽  
Radical Revision ◽  
Political Value

While libertarians (by most accounts) affirm personal responsibility as a central moral and political value, libertarian theorists write relatively little about the theory and practice of this value. Focusing on the work of F. A. Hayek and David Schmidtz, this article identifies the core of a libertarian approach to personal responsibility and demonstrates the ways in which this approach entails a radical revision of the ethics and American politics of personal responsibility. Then, I highlight several central implications of this analysis in the American political and economic status quo. First, this analysis makes a mockery of so-called libertarian/conservative ‘fusionism’, such that libertarian personal responsibility cannot partner with meritocratic conservative thought to provide a plural grounding for rejecting progressive or redistributive economic policy. Next, preferred libertarian policies threaten the status, esteem and social bases of self-respect of citizens who are worse-off through little or no fault of their own. Finally, these policies undermine the ethics of personal responsibility that Americans from across the ideological spectrum value and many conservatives and libertarians celebrate. In the American status quo, those who value personal responsibility must reserve a central place for policies that mitigate opportunity and distributive inequalities.

scholarly journals SUPERINTERACTION CONCEPT AND STANDARD MODEL OF FUNDAMENTAL INTERACTION TYPES

Metaphysics ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 95-105
Author(s):  
V. N Knyazev
Keyword(s):  
Standard Model ◽  
Conceptual Models ◽  
Big Bang ◽  
Philosophy Of Physics ◽  
Fundamental Interaction ◽  
Main Attention ◽  
Physical Knowledge ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Big Bang ◽  
Mechanism Of Separation

The article discusses the status of a standard model of the fundamental types of interaction in the context of the concept of superinteraction. The latter is understood as a metaphysical cognitive phenomenon, formed in the bosom of the philosophy of physics at the turn of the XX-XXI centuries. The main attention is paid to cosmic microphysics as a branch of physical knowledge, revealing a single foundation of micro-, macroand megaworlds. The process of forming unifying conceptual models of the fundamental types of interactions is analyzed, and the mechanism of separation of superinteraction in the first second of the Big Bang into “daughter” branches is also considered.

scholarly journals On the right of ownership of religious organizations to land

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (19) ◽  
pp. 13-20
Author(s):  
Pavel Bochkov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Religious Organizations ◽  
Freedom Of Conscience ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
Charitable Organizations ◽  
Economic Management ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Right

When it comes to economic relations involving religious organizations, the property issue is Central to the construction of these relations, since to obtain the status of a legal entity, the subject must have a certain property base. Legal regime of property of religious organizations not only define requirements to the status of a property (i.e. object), but also determines the regulation of economic competence of the entity that owns this property. Among legal scholars, disputes about the ownership of religious organizations are taking place precisely because the Central place in the system of property rights is occupied by the right of ownership, which is fundamental among other property rights. All other rights (the right of economic management, the right of lifelong inherited ownership of land, etc.) are derived from it and have limited property rights. Economic relations as a subject of regulation consists of only two elements – organizational and property. Property issues related to the property of any religious organizations traditionally remain one of the most difficult for legal understanding, although they are crucial, since the implementation of the right to freedom of conscience presupposes the existence of a certain property base. The question of ownership of religious property is directly related to the natural right of every person to freedom of conscience, which has found its legislative expression both at the international legal level and in the norms of domestic legislation. The Russian legislator believes that religious organizations are such non-profit organizations as, for example, charitable organizations, which means that they can be studied without taking into account the specifics of internal organizational and organizational-property relations in isolation from the provisions of Canon law, and this leads to the emergence of many controversial issues that relate to the economic activities of religious organizations. The current legislation does not allow for a clear definition of what form of ownership the property of religious organizations belongs to, since the current legislation does not clearly define such a form of ownership as the property of parents. In our opinion, the property of religious organizations should be classified as a different form of ownership – as the property of religious organizations, and not as private or collective, since religious organizations have a specific, different from public organizations, the principle of organizational structure, the procedure for making decisions on property management, and so on.

scholarly journals Philosophy of the Physical Sciences

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carl Hoefer ◽  
Chris Smeenk
Keyword(s):  
Physical Sciences ◽  
Fundamental Physics ◽  
The Status ◽  
Naturalized Metaphysics ◽  
Manifest Image ◽  
Modal Notion ◽  
Fundamental Physical ◽  
Physical Modalities ◽  
The Ideal ◽  
Fundamental Physical Theories

The authors survey some debates about the nature and structure of physical theories and about the connections between our physical theories and naturalized metaphysics. The discussion is organized around an “ideal view” of physical theories and criticisms that can be raised against it. This view includes controversial commitments regarding the best analysis of physical modalities and intertheory relations. The authors consider the case in favor of taking laws as the primary modal notion, discussing objections related to alleged violations of the laws, the apparent need to appeal to causality, and the status of probability. The “ideal view” includes a commitment that fundamental physical theories are explanatorily sufficient. The authors discuss several challenges to recovering the manifest image from fundamental physics, along with a distinct challenge to reductionism based on acknowledging the contributions of less fundamental theories in physical explanations.

The Enlightenment at War

PMLA ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 124 (5) ◽  
pp. 1851-1854 ◽  
Author(s):  
Madeleine Dobie
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
North America ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Cultural Minority ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Low Profile ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Status ◽  
Indian War ◽  
Global War

Though few today, even in academic circles, can say with certainty when, where, or over what issues the seven years' war was fought, this mid-eighteenth-century conflict can fairly be characterized as the first global war. It was fought on three continents—Europe, North America, and Asia—and there were significant encounters in West Africa and the Caribbean. It engaged all the European powers, and it is estimated to have cost over a million lives. The historian Linda Colley has characterized the Seven Years' War as “[t]he most dramatically successful war the British ever fought” (101). From the standpoint of empire, this assessment is accurate. The war established the contours of the vast British Empire and brought the rival French presence in North America and India to a sudden end. It also had transformative outcomes for the populations caught in the crossfire. Terms such as global, diaspora, refugee, and cultural minority are more widely applied in discussions of contemporary transnational warfare, but they helpfully illuminate the upheavals associated with this eighteenth-century conflict. The global warfare of the 1750s–60s relegated the indigenous population of North America to the status of an embattled cultural minority, and it turned thousands of francophone Canadians into refugees. Yet despite its scale and the social and political fallout it occasioned, the Seven Years' War has never occupied a central place in the national narratives of its major contestants or in the historiography of the Enlightenment. The main reason for this low profile, I think, is that the war was a many-sided conflict, fought on both metropolitan and colonial fronts. Because of this multilateralism, the war has had a fragmented historical reception, a fracture reflected in the various names by which it has come to be known. The label Seven Years' War is generally used to refer to the fighting that took place in Europe. The war in North America, on the other hand, goes under the name French and Indian War, though in Quebec it is remembered more acrimoniously as the War of Conquest. Histories of India often inventory the warfare of the 1750s–60s under the academic-sounding title Third Carnatic War; a more meaningful characterization would be that it marked the starting point of British rule in India.

Action at a Distance: From Boscovich to Nietzsche

2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 198-219
Author(s):  
Conor Husbands
Keyword(s):  
Central Point ◽  
Time Points ◽  
Principal Objective ◽  
The Status ◽  
Action At A Distance ◽  
Atom Theory ◽  
Scholarly Attention ◽  
Complete Account

Abstract Limited scholarly attention has been committed to the analysis of Nietzsche’s 1873 Time-Atom Theory, a fragment whose contentions strike both the seasoned and unseasoned reader of the Nachlass as especially speculative and grandiose. The principal objective of this essay is to critically review and extend the recent aspects of this limited commentary, focusing on the work of Gregory Whitlock, Robin Small and Keith Ansell-Pearson. I argue that an important and overlooked ambiguity is latent in Nietzsche’s framing of his argument, which impinges upon the scope and purpose of the fragment. I consider the question posed by Small as to the status of the time-points in the fragment which, I contend, Nietzsche does not hold to be empirical. Thirdly, I discuss a central point of debate between Whitlock, Small and Ansell-Pearson: the extent of the analogy between Roger Boscovich and Nietzsche. I submit in conclusion that the connections between the two have been over-emphasised in the context of the 1873 fragment, and that this relationship cannot yield a complete account of Nietzsche’s approach.

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