Download or read book Foundations of Relational Realism written by Michael Epperson and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2013-06-20 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If there is a central conceptual framework that has reliably borne the weight of modern physics as it ascends into the twenty-first century, it is the framework of quantum mechanics. Because of its enduring stability in experimental application, physics has today reached heights that not only inspire wonder, but arguably exceed the limits of intuitive vision, if not intuitive comprehension. For many physicists and philosophers, however, the currently fashionable tendency toward exotic interpretation of the theoretical formalism is recognized not as a mark of ascent for the tower of physics, but rather an indicator of sway—one that must be dampened rather than encouraged if practical progress is to continue. In this unique two-part volume, designed to be comprehensible to both specialists and non-specialists, the authors chart out a pathway forward by identifying the central deficiency in most interpretations of quantum mechanics: That in its conventional, metrical depiction of extension, inherited from the Enlightenment, objects are characterized as fundamental to relations—i.e., such that relations presuppose objects but objects do not presuppose relations. The authors, by contrast, argue that quantum mechanics exemplifies the fact that physical extensiveness is fundamentally topological rather than metrical, with its proper logico-mathematical framework being category theoretic rather than set theoretic. By this thesis, extensiveness fundamentally entails not only relations of objects, but also relations of relations. Thus, the fundamental quanta of quantum physics are properly defined as units of logico-physical relation rather than merely units of physical relata as is the current convention. Objects are always understood as relata, and likewise relations are always understood objectively. In this way, objects and relations are coherently defined as mutually implicative. The conventional notion of a history as “a story about fundamental objects” is thereby reversed, such that the classical “objects” become the story by which we understand physical systems that are fundamentally histories of quantum events. These are just a few of the novel critical claims explored in this volume—claims whose exemplification in quantum mechanics will, the authors argue, serve more broadly as foundational principles for the philosophy of nature as it evolves through the twenty-first century and beyond.
Download or read book Foundations of Relational Realism written by Michael Epperson and published by Contemporary Whitehead Studies. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Foundations of Relational Realism presents an intuitive interpretation of quantum mechanics, based on a revised decoherent histories interpretation, structured within a category theoretic topological formalism.
Download or read book The Foundation of Reality written by David Glick and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-29 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are space and time fundamental features of our world or might they emerge from something else? The Foundation of Reality brings together metaphysicians and philosophers of physics working on space, time, and fundamentality to address this timely question. Recent developments in the interpretation of quantum mechanics and the understanding of certain approaches to quantum gravity have led philosophers of physics to propose that space and time might be emergent rather than fundamental. But such discussions are often conducted without engagement with those working on fundamentality and related issues in contemporary metaphysics. This book aims to correct this oversight. The diverse contributions to this volume address topics including the nature of fundamentality, the relation of space and time to quantum entanglement, and space and time in theories of quantum gravity. Only through consideration of a range of different approaches to the topic can we hope to get clear on the status of space and time in our contemporary understanding of physical reality.
Download or read book Materialist Philosophy of History written by Branko Mitrovic´ and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-07-08 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does it mean for our understanding of history if we assume that everything is physical and that no immaterial entities, forces, or phenomena exist? A Materialist Philosophy of History: A Realist Antidote to Postmodernism examines the implications of a materialist worldview in contemporary philosophy of history. Materialism has wide-ranging consequences for historical research as well as for the credibility of various conceptions of the historical past. Branko Mitrović shows how these implications pertain both to the nature of social institutions and the capacities of historical figures to decide, act, acquire beliefs, and communicate and to the methodology of historical research and problems, such as the interpretation and the translation of historical documents. A materialist view also entails rejecting the view that forces such as culture, language, or society can construct physical reality or that the historical past is constructed through the work of the historian. This book examines these consequences and presents a comprehensive materialist perspective on historical research and the understanding of the historical past.
Download or read book Varieties of Scientific Realism written by Evandro Agazzi and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-03-08 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a comprehensive update on the scientific realism debate, enabling readers to gain a novel appreciation of the role of objectivity and truth in science and to understand fully the various ways in which antirealist conceptions have been subjected to challenge over recent decades. Authoritative representatives of different philosophical traditions explain their perspectives on the meaning and validity of scientific realism and describe the strategies being adopted to counter persisting antirealist positions. The coverage extends beyond the usual discussion of realism within the context of the natural sciences, and especially physics, to encompass also its applicability in mathematics, logic, and the human sciences. The book will appeal to all with an interest in the recent realist epistemologies of science, the nature of current philosophical debate, and the ongoing rehabilitation of truth as the legitimate goal of scientific research.
Download or read book A Realist Metaphysics of Race written by Jeremy Pierce and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2014-12-11 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In A Realist Metaphysics of Race: A Context-Sensitive, Short-Term Retentionist, Long-Term Revisionist Approach, Jeremy Pierce defends a social kind view of racial categories. On this view, the biological features we use to classify people racially do not make races natural kinds. Rather, races exist because of contingent social practices, single out certain groups of people as races, give them social importance, and allow us to name them as races. Pierce also identifies several kinds of context-sensitivity as central to how racial categorization works and argues that we need racial categories to identify problems in how our racial constructions are formed, including the harmful effects of racial constructions. Hence, rather than seeking to eliminate such categories, Pierce argues that we should also make efforts to change the conditions that generate their problematic elements, with an eye toward retaining only the unproblematic aspects. A Realist Metaphysics of Race contains insights relevant not just to professional philosophers in metaphysics, philosophy of race, social philosophy, philosophy of language, and philosophy of science, but also to students and scholars working in sociology, biology, anthropology, ethnic studies, and political science.
Download or read book Quantum International Relations written by James Der Derian and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-05-03 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The contributors to this volume are motivated by a common apprehension and a common hope. The apprehension was first voiced by Einstein, who lamented the inability of humanity, at the individual and social level, to keep up with the increased speed of technological change brought about by the quantum revolution. As quantum science and technology fast forward into the 21st century, the social sciences remain stuck in classical, 19th century ways of thinking. Can such a mechanistic model of the mind and society possibly help us manage the fully realized technological potential of the quantum? That's where the hope appears: that perhaps quantum is not just a physical science, but a human science too. In Quantum International Relations, James Der Derian and Alexander Wendt gather rising scholars and leading experts to make the case for quantum approaches to world politics. As a fundamental theory of reality and enabler of new technologies, quantum now touches everything, with the potential to revolutionize how we conduct diplomacy, wage war, and make wealth. Contributors present the core principles of quantum mechanics--entanglement, uncertainty, superposition, and the wave function--as significant catalysts and superior heuristics for an accelerating quantum future. Facing a reality which no longer corresponds to an outdated Newtonian worldview of states as billiard balls, individuals as rational actors or power as objective interest, Der Derian and Wendt issue an urgent call for a new human science of quantum International Relations. At the centenary of the first quantum thought experiment in the 1920s, this book offers a diversity of explorations, speculations and approaches for understanding geopolitics in the 21st century.
Download or read book Adventures In Quantumland Exploring Our Unseen Reality written by Ruth E Kastner and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2019-04-17 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title is a self-contained follow-up to Understanding Our Unseen Reality: Solving Quantum Riddles (2015). Intended for the general reader but including more advanced material and an appendix of technical references for physics students and researchers, it reviews the basics of the transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics in its newer incarnation as a fully relativistic, realist interpretation of quantum theory, while embarking on further explorations of the implications of quantum theory. This interpretation is applied to new experiments and alleged 'paradoxes' that are found to be fully explicable once various misconceptions are identified.There is currently much disagreement about the meaning of quantum theory, as well as confusion about the implications of various experiments such as 'weak measurements,' 'quantum eraser,' and delayed choice. This book provides a clear way forward, presenting new developments and elaborating a promising interpretational approach that has completely nullified earlier objections (such as the Maudlin objection). It also explains why some prominent competing interpretations, such as 'decoherence' in an Everettian ('Many Worlds') approach, do not work as advertised.Adventures in Quantumland: Exploring Our Unseen Reality offers a fully relativistic interpretation of quantum mechanics with no discontinuity between non-relativistic and relativistic domains and shows how quantum theory allows for free will and for reconciliation of science and spiritual traditions.Related Link(s)
Download or read book Coding as Literacy written by Vera Bühlmann and published by Birkhäuser. This book was released on 2015-07-24 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent developments in computer science, particularly ”data-driven procedures“ have opened a new level of design and engineering. This has also affected architecture. The publication collects contributions on Coding as Literacy by computer scientists, mathematicians, philosophers, cultural theorists, and architects. The main focus in the book is the observation of computer-based methods that go beyond strictly case-based or problem-solution-oriented paradigms. This invites readers to understand Computational Procedures as being embedded in an overarching ”media literacy“ that can be revealed through, and acquired by, ”computational literacy“, and to consider the data processed in the above-mentioned methods as being beneficial in terms of quantum physics. ”Self-Organizing Maps“ (SOM), which were first introduced over 30 years ago, will serve as the concrete reference point for all further discussions.
Download or read book Astrophilosophy Exotheology and Cosmic Religion written by Andrew M. Davis and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2024-01-22 with total page 575 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Astrophilosopy, Exotheology, and Cosmic Religion: Extraterrestrial Life in a Process Universe applies Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy and the associated process philosophies of Henri Bergson, Teilhard de Chardin, and others to the interdisciplinary layers of astrobiology, extraterrestrial life, and the impact of discovery. This collection, edited by Andrew M. Davis and Roland Faber, asks questions such as “How have process thinkers imagined universal creative evolution and its implications for philosophies, theologies, and religions beyond earth?” and “How might their claims as to the primacy of organism, temporality, novelty, value, and mind enrich current discussions and debates across disciplines?” As experts in their fields, the contributors are informed by, but not limited to, process conceptualities. The chapters not only advance recent discussions in astrobiology, cosmology, and evolution but also consider a constellation of philosophical topics, from shared extraterrestrial knowledge and values to the possibilities or limitations afforded by A.I. technology, the Fermi Paradox, the Drake Equation, and the increasing need to nurture the cosmic dimensions of theological and religious traditions.
Download or read book Physics and Speculative Philosophy written by Timothy E. Eastman and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2016-02-22 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through both an historical and philosophical analysis of the concept of possibility, we show how including both potentiality and actuality as part of the real is both compatible with experience and contributes to solving key problems of fundamental process and emergence. The book is organized into four main sections that incorporate our routes to potentiality: (1) potentiality in modern science [history and philosophy; quantum physics and complexity]; (2) Relational Realism [ontological interpretation of quantum physics; philosophy and logic]; (3) Process Physics [ontological interpretation of relativity theory; physics and philosophy]; (4) on speculative philosophy and physics [limitations and approximations; process philosophy]. We conclude that certain fundamental problems in modern physics require complementary analyses of certain philosophical and metaphysical issues, and that such scholarship reveals intrinsic features and limits of determinism, potentiality and emergence that enable, among others, important progress on the quantum theory of measurement problem and new understandings of emergence.
Download or read book Untying the Gordian Knot written by Timothy E. Eastman and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-12-10 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context, Timothy E. Eastman proposes a new creative synthesis, the Logoi framework—which is radically inclusive and incorporates both actuality and potentiality—to show how the fundamental notions of process, logic, and relations, woven with triads of input-output-context and quantum logical distinctions, can resolve a baker’s dozen of age-old philosophic problems. Further, Eastman leverages a century of advances in quantum physics and the Relational Realism interpretation pioneered by Michael Epperson and Elias Zafiris and augmented by the independent research of Ruth Kastner and Hans Primas to resolve long-standing issues in understanding quantum physics. Adding to this, Eastman makes use of advances in information and complex systems, semiotics, and process philosophy to show how multiple levels of context, combined with relations—including potential relations—both local and local-global, can provide a grounding for causation, emergence, and physical law. Finally, the Logoi framework goes beyond standard ways of knowing—that of context independence (science) and context focus (arts, humanities)—to demonstrate the inevitable role of ultimate context (meaning, spiritual dimension) as part of a transformative ecological vision, which is urgently needed in these times of human and environmental crises.
Download or read book The Quantum of Explanation written by Randall E. Auxier and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-03-31 with total page 558 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Quantum of Explanation advances a bold new theory of how explanation ought to be understood in philosophical and cosmological inquiries. Using a complete interpretation of Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophical and mathematical writings and an interpretive structure that is essentially new, Auxier and Herstein argue that Whitehead has never been properly understood, nor has the depth and breadth of his contribution to the human search for knowledge been assimilated by his successors. This important book effectively applies Whitehead’s philosophy to problems in the interpretation of science, empirical knowledge, and nature. It develops a new account of philosophical naturalism that will contribute to the current naturalism debate in both Analytic and Continental philosophy. Auxier and Herstein also draw attention to some of the most important differences between the process theology tradition and Whitehead’s thought, arguing in favor of a Whiteheadian naturalism that is more or less independent of theological concerns. This book offers a clear and comprehensive introduction to Whitehead’s philosophy and is an essential resource for students and scholars interested in American philosophy, the philosophy of mathematics and physics, and issues associated with naturalism, explanation and radical empiricism.
Download or read book Quantum Mechanics and Fundamentality written by Valia Allori and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-07-27 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited collection provides new perspectives on some metaphysical questions arising in quantum mechanics. These questions have been long-standing and are of continued interest to researchers and graduate students working in physics, philosophy of physics, and metaphysics. It features contributions from a diverse set of researchers, ranging from senior scholars to junior academics, working in varied fields, from physics to philosophy of physics and metaphysics. The contributors reflect on issues about fundamentality (is quantum theory fundamental? If so, what is its fundamental ontology?), ontological dependence (how do ordinary objects exist even if they are not fundamental?), realism (what kind of realism is compatible with quantum theory?), indeterminacy (can the world itself exhibit ontological indeterminacy?). The book contains contributions from both physicists (including Nobel Prize winner Gerard 't Hooft), science communicators and philosophers.
Download or read book Quantum Mechanics and the Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead written by Michael Epperson and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2004-07-15 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an extended analysis of the intricate relationships between relativity theory, quantum mechanics and Alfred North Whitehead's cosmology. Michael Epperson illuminates the intersection of science and philosophy in Whitehead's work.
Download or read book A Companion to James of Viterbo written by Antoine Côté and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-04-10 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ten leading scholars team up to produce the first book-length treatment of the philosophical thought of James of Viterbo, one of the key thinkers at Paris in the late thirteenth century. The book examines all major areas of James’s philosophical thought, exploring his connections with other important masters of the time and highlighting his originality in the context of late medieval philosophy. Contributors are: Antoine Côté, Stephen D. Dumont, R. W. Dyson, Mark D. Gossiaux, Mark Henninger, Thomas Osborne Jr., Martin Pickavé, Eric L. Saak, Jean-Luc Solère, and Gianpiero Tavolaro.
Download or read book Einstein vs Bergson written by Alessandra Campo and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-11-08 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings together papers from a conference that took place in the city of L'Aquila, 4–6 April 2019, to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the earthquake that struck on 6 April 2009. Philosophers and scientists from diverse fields of research debated the problem that, on 6 April 1922, divided Einstein and Bergson: the nature of time. For Einstein, scientific time is the only time that matters and the only time we can rely on. Bergson, however, believes that scientific time is derived by abstraction, even in the sense of extraction, from a more fundamental time. The plurality of times envisaged by the theory of Relativity does not, for him, contradict the philosophical intuition of the existence of a single time. But how do things stand today? What can we say about the relationship between the quantitative and qualitative dimensions of time in the light of contemporary science? What do quantum mechanics, biology and neuroscience teach us about the nature of time? The essays collected here take up the question that pitted Einstein against Bergson, science against philosophy, in an attempt to reverse the outcome of their monologue in two voices, with a multilogue in several voices.
