A New Foundation of Physical Theories PDF Download

Author: Günther Ludwig
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3540308334
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
Aims to clarify and formulate the fundamental ideas of physical theories. Suitable for both physicists and philosophers of science, this book introduces the concept of idealization and reviews the process of discovering new concepts.

Author: Michael Friedman
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400855128
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 403

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Book Description
This book, explores the conceptual foundations of Einstein's theory of relativity: the fascinating, yet tangled, web of philosophical, mathematical, and physical ideas that is the source of the theory's enduring philosophical interest. Originally published in 1983. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Author: Tim Maudlin
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069118352X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
A sophisticated and original introduction to the philosophy of quantum mechanics from one of the world’s leading philosophers of physics In this book, Tim Maudlin, one of the world’s leading philosophers of physics, offers a sophisticated, original introduction to the philosophy of quantum mechanics. The briefest, clearest, and most refined account of his influential approach to the subject, the book will be invaluable to all students of philosophy and physics. Quantum mechanics holds a unique place in the history of physics. It has produced the most accurate predictions of any scientific theory, but, more astonishing, there has never been any agreement about what the theory implies about physical reality. Maudlin argues that the very term “quantum theory” is a misnomer. A proper physical theory should clearly describe what is there and what it does—yet standard textbooks present quantum mechanics as a predictive recipe in search of a physical theory. In contrast, Maudlin explores three proper theories that recover the quantum predictions: the indeterministic wavefunction collapse theory of Ghirardi, Rimini, and Weber; the deterministic particle theory of deBroglie and Bohm; and the conceptually challenging Many Worlds theory of Everett. Each offers a radically different proposal for the nature of physical reality, but Maudlin shows that none of them are what they are generally taken to be.

Author: Travis Norsen
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319658670
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
Authored by an acclaimed teacher of quantum physics and philosophy, this textbook pays special attention to the aspects that many courses sweep under the carpet. Traditional courses in quantum mechanics teach students how to use the quantum formalism to make calculations. But even the best students - indeed, especially the best students - emerge rather confused about what, exactly, the theory says is going on, physically, in microscopic systems. This supplementary textbook is designed to help such students understand that they are not alone in their confusions (luminaries such as Albert Einstein, Erwin Schroedinger, and John Stewart Bell having shared them), to sharpen their understanding of the most important difficulties associated with interpreting quantum theory in a realistic manner, and to introduce them to the most promising attempts to formulate the theory in a way that is physically clear and coherent. The text is accessible to students with at least one semester of prior exposure to quantum (or "modern") physics and includes over a hundred engaging end-of-chapter "Projects" that make the book suitable for either a traditional classroom or for self-study.

Author: M. Bunge
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3642806244
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
This is a collection of technical papers in the foundations and the philoso It takes both "foundations" phy of physics with emphasis on the former. and "philosophy" in their narrow technical senses but it construes "physics" lato sensu, as including all the sciences of nonliving systems. All eleven papers constituting this volume were written for it. The problems tackled in this book concern certain basic concepts, hypotheses, theories, and research programmes in physical science. Some of these problems are topical, others new, but they are all fundamental and the subject of research and controversy. Consequently this volume is expected to serve those students, teachers and researchers who enjoy learning, teaching, discussing or doing theoretical physics. It is addressed to the nine to niners rather than to the nine to fivers. It is expected to attract the theoretician in search for new basic ideas, the teacher eager to perfect his understanding of physical theory and transmit his own zeal and his own doubts, as well as the student anxious to get down to essentials. This book may also interest the mathematician for whom physics offers a challenge (or a good pretext). Finally, it should get the attention of the philosopher of science aware of the advantages of philosophizing on foundations research problems rather than on the popularization of some results of research. There are at least two reasons for valuing foundations research.

Author: Mario Bunge
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9783540039839
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
This is not an introduction to physics but an analysis of its founda tions. Indeed, the aims of this book are: (1) to analyze the form and content of some of the key ideas of physics; (2) to formulate several basic physical theories in an explicit and orderly (i. e. , axiomatic) fashion; (3) to exhibit their presuppositions and discuss some of their philosoph ical implications; (4) to discuss some of the controversial issues, and (5) to debunk certain dusty philosophical tenets that obscure the under standing of physics and hinder its progress. To the extent to which these goals are attained, the volume can serve as a companion to studies in theoretical physics aiming at deepening the understanding of the logical structure and the physical meaning of our science. In order to keep the book slender, whole fields of basic physical research had to be excluded - chiefly many-body physics, quantum field theories, and elementary particle theories. A large coverage was believed to be less important than a comparatively detailed analysis and reconstruction of three representative monuments: classical mechan ics, general relativity, and quantum mechanics, as well as their usually unrecognized presuppositions. The reader is invited to join the project and supply some of the many missing chapters - or to rewrite the present ones entirely.

Author: Antonio Romano
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030272370
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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Book Description
This unique textbook offers a mathematically rigorous presentation of the theory of relativity, emphasizing the need for a critical analysis of the foundations of general relativity in order to best study the theory and its implications. The transitions from classical mechanics to special relativity and then to general relativity are explored in detail as well, helping readers to gain a more profound and nuanced understanding of the theory as a whole. After reviewing the fundamentals of differential geometry and classical mechanics, the text introduces special relativity, first using the physical approach proposed by Einstein and then via Minkowski’s mathematical model. The authors then address the relativistic thermodynamics of continua and electromagnetic fields in matter – topics which are normally covered only very briefly in other treatments – in the next two chapters. The text then turns to a discussion of general relativity by means of the authors’ unique critical approach, underlining the difficulty of recognizing the physical meaning of some statements, such as the physical meaning of coordinates and the derivation of physical quantities from those of space-time. Chapters in this section cover the model of space-time proposed by Schwarzschild; black holes; the Friedman equations and the different cosmological models they describe; and the Fermi-Walker derivative. Well-suited for graduate students in physics and mathematics who have a strong foundation in real analysis, classical mechanics, and general physics, this textbook is appropriate for a variety of graduate-level courses that cover topics in relativity. Additionally, it will interest physicists and other researchers who wish to further study the subtleties of these theories and understand the contemporary scholarly discussions surrounding them.

Author: Klaas Landsman
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781013278365
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 880

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Book Description
This book studies the foundations of quantum theory through its relationship to classical physics. This idea goes back to the Copenhagen Interpretation (in the original version due to Bohr and Heisenberg), which the author relates to the mathematical formalism of operator algebras originally created by von Neumann. The book therefore includes comprehensive appendices on functional analysis and C*-algebras, as well as a briefer one on logic, category theory, and topos theory. Matters of foundational as well as mathematical interest that are covered in detail include symmetry (and its "spontaneous" breaking), the measurement problem, the Kochen-Specker, Free Will, and Bell Theorems, the Kadison-Singer conjecture, quantization, indistinguishable particles, the quantum theory of large systems, and quantum logic, the latter in connection with the topos approach to quantum theory. This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.

Author: Sadri Hassani
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9780387985794
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1052

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Book Description
For physics students interested in the mathematics they use, and for math students interested in seeing how some of the ideas of their discipline find realization in an applied setting. The presentation strikes a balance between formalism and application, between abstract and concrete. The interconnections among the various topics are clarified both by the use of vector spaces as a central unifying theme, recurring throughout the book, and by putting ideas into their historical context. Enough of the essential formalism is included to make the presentation self-contained.

Author: Rudolf Carnap
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486140865
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Stimulating, thought-provoking text by one of the 20th century's most creative philosophers makes accessible such topics as probability, measurement and quantitative language, causality and determinism, theoretical laws and concepts, more.