Richard Feynman (1918-1988) argues in his famous Lectures on Physics (1961/62) that finite accuracy of measurement also makes the future very unpredictable, because even very small errors in prediction have cascading effects that lead to vastly different outcomes. Thus, the...
Richard Feynman is a physicist who won the Nobel Prize, worked on the Manhattan Project, he played a key role in explaining the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, and he is known for the “Feynman diagrams” that symbolize particle collisions. He...
David Joseph Bohm lived from 20 December 1917 to 27 October 1992. He was an American theoretical physicist who contributed innovative and unorthodox ideas to quantum theory, philosophy of mind, and neuro-psychology. He is considered to be one of the...
Here are some quotes about the controversy between reductionism and emergence as basic paradigm for physics. Robert Laughlin: A Different Universe: Reinventing Physics from the Bottom Down. 2005. From the Introduction: “Much as I dislike the idea of ages, I think...
Source: Mind 49: 433-460. 1. The Imitation Game I propose to consider the question, “Can machines think?” This should begin with definitions of the meaning of the terms “machine” and “think.” The definitions might be framed so as to reflect...
Source: This is a chapter from Science & Method (1897). Even today, it’s an interesting book to read. I. IT is impossible to picture empty space. All our efforts to imagine pure space from which the changing images of material...
In his newest book, Radical Abundance: How a Revolution in Nanotechnology Will Change Civilization, 2013, he tells the history of nanotechnology from its beginnings to today, and then he turns towards the future: What can we expect from the accelerating...
It is difficult for us to fathom the scale of the universe. The differences between the smallest structures and the largest are so enormous that linear scales are useless. We need exponential scales, which make the numbers appear to be...
We are currently experiencing a paradigm shift in scientific thinking and explanation, away from reductionist and constructivist approaches. This shift is the result of the introduction of computers and the internet. Scientific researchers are now capable of collecting and processing...
He is one of the most important physicists and mathematicians of all time. Biography This short biography is quoted from the BBC History site. Isaac Newton was born on 4 January 1643 in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire. His father was a prosperous...
In response to a 1993 challenge from the UK Science Minister to produce a one-page simple explanation of the Higgs boson, the following entries were submitted. (Quoted from “Physics World”, Volume 6 Number 9). As we all know, the Higgs...
Murray Gell-Mann developed the theory of quarks, the fundamental particles that constitute the atomic core. Here is an excerpt of his biography from the Nobel prize website.
The following timeline of discoveries the led to the Standard Model is quoted from Fermilab’s website. “The current theoretical framework that describes elementary particles and their forces, known as the Standard Model, is based on experiments that started in 1897...
In 1935 Schrodinger published an essay describing the conceptual problems in Quantum mechanics. A brief paragraph in this essay described the cat paradox: “One can even set up quite ridiculous cases. A cat is penned up in a steel chamber,...
Quantum nonlocality is a paradox that was described first by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen (EPR), who published the idea in 1935. The EPR paradox draws attention to a phenomenon predicted by quantum mechanics known as quantum entanglement, in which measurements...
How the Universe can come from Nothing: The following quotes address vacuum fluctuations and the idea that things – perhaps even the entire universe – can indeed arise from nothing via natural processes. Vacuum Fluctuations and Virtual Particles In the...