scholarly journals Compressibility and the Algorithmic Theory of Laws

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 461-485
Author(s):  
Billy Wheeler
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Data ◽  
Chaotic Behavior ◽  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Quantum Systems ◽  
The Other ◽  
Simple Set ◽  
Convincing Case ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Practice Of Science

The algorithmic theory of laws claims that the laws of nature are the algorithms in the best possible compression of all empirical data. This position assumes that the universe is compressible and that data received from observing it is easily reproducible using a simple set of rules. However, there are three sources of evidence that suggest that the universe as a whole is incompressible. The first comes from the practice of science. The other two come from the nature of the universe itself: the presence of chaotic behavior and the nature of quantum systems also suggests that the universe is incompressible. This paper evaluates these sources and argues that none provides a convincing case to reject the algorithmic theory of laws.

Semiotics – Another Window on the World

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jie Zhang ◽  
Hongbing Yu
Keyword(s):  
Social Studies ◽  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
The Other ◽  
Marshall Mcluhan ◽  
Book Series ◽  
Intellectual Inquiry ◽  
The World ◽  
Normal University ◽  
The Universe

Abstract Contemporary semiotics proceeds and progresses along two major paths of human intellectual inquiry in general: One is to constantly extend and deepen social studies; the other is to use theoretical and logical reasoning to examine and even predict the laws of nature and the universe. To highlight these two paths and reflect the latest trends in current semiotic inquiry, we have launched the book series of “Select Works of Eminent Contemporary Semioticians,” published by the Nanjing Normal University Press. The first five English monographs included in this book series are Basics of semiotics (eighth expanded edition) and Logic as a liberal art by John Deely, Marshall McLuhan: The unwitting semiotician by Marcel Danesi, Signs in society and culture by Arthur Asa Berger, and The way of logic by Christopher S. Morrissey. These five books afford not only revelations in the ways of knowing and the dimensions of thought, but also new perspectives for interpreting contemporary sociocultural phenomena and their developments.

Freedom, Knowledge, Belief and Causality

1969 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 132-154
Author(s):  
David Wiggins
Keyword(s):  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Physical Nature ◽  
Physical Effect ◽  
The Other ◽  
Causal Determinism ◽  
The World ◽  
Causal Nexus ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Better Than

When we try to think about the causal nexus and the physical nature of the world as a whole we may be struck by two quite different difficulties in finding room in it to accommodate together (a) knowledge or reasoned belief and (b) causal determinism. (a) may seem to us to exclude (b) and (b) may seem to us to exclude (a). Taking it as a fact that there is knowledge and that knowledge seems to be indefinitely extensible, it has been felt by some philosophers that we can disprove total determinism by showing that if there were laws of nature which purported to govern all movements of matter in the universe there would still be something which even an ‘all-knowing’ predicter could not predict, viz. his own predictions or his own actions; and that given enough knowledge any agent could refute anybody else's predictions of his actions. So it has been thought that the phenomenon of knowledge somehow shows there cannot be laws to govern all movements of matter in the universe. This comfortably anodyne reflection is examined in the second part of the lecture. It elevates human minds and even confers a sort of cosmic importance on them. The other difficulty in making room for both (a) and (b) is in some loose sense the dual of this. Instead of taking knowledge for granted and questioning total determinism, it merely takes causality for granted but then deduces the total impossibility of knowledge. It simply asks: ‘How can we take a belief seriously, or consider it seriously as a candidate to be knowledge, if it is no better than a simple physical effect?’ This is a more pessimistic reflection and I shall begin with it.

Freedom, Knowledge, Belief and Causality

1969 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 132-154
Author(s):  
David Wiggins
Keyword(s):  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Physical Nature ◽  
Physical Effect ◽  
The Other ◽  
Causal Determinism ◽  
The World ◽  
Causal Nexus ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Better Than

When we try to think about the causal nexus and the physical nature of the world as a whole we may be struck by two quite different difficulties in finding room in it to accommodate together (a) knowledge or reasoned belief and (b) causal determinism. (a) may seem to us to exclude (b) and (b) may seem to us to exclude (a). Taking it as a fact that there is knowledge and that knowledge seems to be indefinitely extensible, it has been felt by some philosophers that we can disprove total determinism by showing that if there were laws of nature which purported to govern all movements of matter in the universe there would still be something which even an ‘all-knowing’ predicter could not predict, viz. his own predictions or his own actions; and that given enough knowledge any agent could refute anybody else's predictions of his actions. So it has been thought that the phenomenon of knowledge somehow shows there cannot be laws to govern all movements of matter in the universe. This comfortably anodyne reflection is examined in the second part of the lecture. It elevates human minds and even confers a sort of cosmic importance on them. The other difficulty in making room for both (a) and (b) is in some loose sense the dual of this. Instead of taking knowledge for granted and questioning total determinism, it merely takes causality for granted but then deduces the total impossibility of knowledge. It simply asks: ‘How can we take a belief seriously, or consider it seriously as a candidate to be knowledge, if it is no better than a simple physical effect?’ This is a more pessimistic reflection and I shall begin with it.

Laws of Nature

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Scientific Theories ◽  
Law Of Nature ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Universe

The concept of a law of nature, while familiar, is deeply puzzling. Theorists such as Descartes think a divine being governs the universe according to the laws which follow from that being’s own nature. Newton detaches the concept from theology and is agnostic about the ontology underlying the laws of nature. Some later philosophers treat laws as summaries of events or tools for understanding and explanation, or identify the laws with principles and equations fundamental to scientific theories. In the first part of this volume, essays from leading historians of philosophy identify central questions: are laws independent of the things they govern, or do they emanate from the powers of bodies? Are the laws responsible for the patterns we see in nature, or should they be collapsed into those patterns? In the second part, contributors at the forefront of current debate evaluate the role of laws in contemporary Best System, perspectival, Kantian, and powers- or mechanisms-based approaches. These essays take up pressing questions about whether the laws of nature can be consistent with contingency, whether laws are based on the invariants of scientific theories, and how to deal with exceptions to laws. These twelve essays, published here for the first time, will be required reading for anyone interested in metaphysics, philosophy of science, and the histories of these disciplines.

scholarly journals Investigating the properties of a galaxy group at z = 0.6

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (S359) ◽  
pp. 188-189
Author(s):  
Daniela Hiromi Okido ◽  
Cristina Furlanetto ◽  
Marina Trevisan ◽  
Mônica Tergolina
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
The Other ◽  
Numerical Density ◽  
Spectroscopy Data ◽  
Stellar Kinematics ◽  
Galaxy Groups ◽  
The Galaxy ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Universe

AbstractGalaxy groups offer an important perspective on how the large-scale structure of the Universe has formed and evolved, being great laboratories to study the impact of the environment on the evolution of galaxies. We aim to investigate the properties of a galaxy group that is gravitationally lensing HELMS18, a submillimeter galaxy at z = 2.39. We obtained multi-object spectroscopy data using Gemini-GMOS to investigate the stellar kinematics of the central galaxies, determine its members and obtain the mass, radius and the numerical density profile of this group. Our final goal is to build a complete description of this galaxy group. In this work we present an analysis of its two central galaxies: one is an active galaxy with z = 0.59852 ± 0.00007, while the other is a passive galaxy with z = 0.6027 ± 0.0002. Furthermore, the difference between the redshifts obtained using emission and absorption lines indicates an outflow of gas with velocity v = 278.0 ± 34.3 km/s relative to the galaxy.

Signature change in p-adic and noncommutative FRW cosmology

2014 ◽  
Vol 29 (27) ◽  
pp. 1450155 ◽  
Author(s):  
Goran S. Djordjevic ◽  
Ljubisa Nesic ◽  
Darko Radovancevic
Keyword(s):  
Loop Quantum Gravity ◽  
Initial Conditions ◽  
Planck Scale ◽  
The Other ◽  
Frw Cosmology ◽  
Signature Change ◽  
Discrete Nature ◽  
Frw Metric ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Friedmann Robertson Walker

The significant matter for the construction of the so-called no-boundary proposal is the assumption of signature transition, which has been a way to deal with the problem of initial conditions of the universe. On the other hand, results of Loop Quantum Gravity indicate that the signature change is related to the discrete nature of space at the Planck scale. Motivated by possibility of non-Archimedean and/or noncommutative structure of space–time at the Planck scale, in this work we consider the classical, p-adic and (spatial) noncommutative form of a cosmological model with Friedmann–Robertson–Walker (FRW) metric coupled with a self-interacting scalar field.

Temporality and Truth

2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 377-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel W. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Continuous Variation ◽  
Pure Form ◽  
The Other ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One ◽  
Time Image ◽  
Positive Light

This paper examines the intersecting of the themes of temporality and truth in Deleuze's philosophy. For the ancients, truth was something eternal: what was true was true in all times and in all places. Temporality (coming to be and passing away) was the realm of the mutable, not the eternal. In the seventeenth century, change began to be seen in a positive light (progress, evolution, and so on), but this change was seen to be possible only because of the immutable laws of nature that govern change. It was not until philosophers such as Bergson, James, Whitehead – and then Deleuze – that time began to be taken seriously on its own account. On the one hand, in Deleuze, time, freed from its subordination to movement, now becomes autonomous: it is the pure form of change (continuous variation) that lies at the basis of Deleuze's metaphysics in Difference and Repetition (and is explored more thematically in The Time-Image). As a result, on the other hand, the false, freed from its subordination to the form of the true, assumes a power of its own (the power of the false), which in turn implies a new ‘analytic of the concept’ that Deleuze develops in What Is Philosophy?

scholarly journals Searching for space-time variation of the fine structure constant using QSO spectra: overview and future prospects

2009 ◽  
Vol 5 (H15) ◽  
pp. 304-304
Author(s):  
J. C. Berengut ◽  
V. A. Dzuba ◽  
V. V. Flambaum ◽  
J. A. King ◽  
M. G. Kozlov ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Reactor ◽  
Structure Constant ◽  
Big Bang ◽  
The Other ◽  
Fine Structure Constant ◽  
Spatial And Temporal Variation ◽  
Fundamental Constants ◽  
Future Prospects ◽  
Big Bang Nucleosynthesis ◽  
The Universe

Current theories that seek to unify gravity with the other fundamental interactions suggest that spatial and temporal variation of fundamental constants is a possibility, or even a necessity, in an expanding Universe. Several studies have tried to probe the values of constants at earlier stages in the evolution of the Universe, using tools such as big-bang nucleosynthesis, the Oklo natural nuclear reactor, quasar absorption spectra, and atomic clocks (see, e.g. Flambaum & Berengut (2009)).

Self-Structuring in Artificial "Chimps" Offers New Hypotheses for Male Grouping in Chimpanzees

Behaviour ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 130 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 229-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irenaeus J.A. Te Boekhorst ◽  
Paulien Hogeweg
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Data ◽  
The Other ◽  
Territorial Defense ◽  
Party Membership ◽  
Party Size ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Competition For Food ◽  
Self Organisation ◽  
The One ◽  
Artificial World

AbstractChimpanzees live in societies that are characterised both by disorder and order. On the one hand, party size fluctuates in a randomlike fashion and party membership is unpredictable ; on the other hand, fundamental party structures are apparent; males are often in all-male parties whereas females remain mostly solitary. The customary sociobiological explanation is based on the assumptions that 1) competition for food favors solitariness (especially in females); 2) chimpanzee males share the costs of territorial defense against rivals from neighbouring communities and 3) genetical relatedness among males within a community compensates for fitness losses due to their competition for food and females. We point to some theoretical flaws in the reasoning that forms the basis of the current neo-Darwinistic model and to the lack of empirical data concerning male relatedness. Most importantly, chimpanzee-like party structures emerge by self-organisation in an artificial "world" in which "CHIMPs" do nothing more than searching for food and mates, without requiring any of the assumptions of the sociobiological model.

Devotional Emerson

2015 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Gurley
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Modes Of Action ◽  
The World ◽  
The Universe

AbstractAgainst anti-realist readings of the Emersonian self, perhaps most influentially Cavell’s reading, this essay argues that Emerson is a devotional writer. Emerson’s notion of subjectivity is based in two complementary modes of action - one receptive and the other expressive - as one works to “align” oneself with the larger forces that constitute and order the universe. How the world is and how we humans make our way through it are not the same and must not be confused. Such confusion is the decisive mistake the anti-realist critic of Emerson makes. The Emersonian subject must experience the laws of reality directly, on one’s own, rather than “secondhand.” Emerson is a dramatist telling the story of how we come to ideas and learn to judge and to act: of how, that is, we come to have experience. Emerson seeks an unshifting ground through a moment of receptivity and a moment of activity. That he often rarely achieves insight does not make him an anti-realist. This essay demonstrates how, by showing - albeit briefly - that Emersonian experience is fundamentally religious: a work of devotion rather than aversion.

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