Search Results (3)

In physics, we construct idealized mathematical models in order to explain various phenomena which we observe or create in our laboratories. In this article, I recall how sophisticated mathematical models evolved from the concept of a number created thousands of years ago, and I discuss some challenges and open questions in quantum foundations and in the Standard Model. We liberated nuclear energy, landed on the Moon and built ‘quantum computers’. Encouraged by these successes, many believe that when we reconcile general relativity with quantum theory we will have the correct theory of everything. Perhaps we should be much humbler. Our perceptions of reality are biased by our senses and by our brain, bending them to meet our priors and expectations. Our abstract mathematical models describe only in an approximate way different layers of physical reality. To describe the motion of a meteorite, we can use a concept of a material point, but the point-like approximation breaks completely when the meteorite hits the Earth. Similarly, thermodynamic, chemical, molecular, atomic, nuclear and elementary particle layers of physical reality are described using specific abstract mathematical models and approximations. In my opinion, the theory of everything does not exist. Full article

We start with a methodological analysis of the notion of scientific theory and its interrelation with reality. This analysis is based on the works of Helmholtz, Hertz, Boltzmann, and Schrödinger (and reviews of D’Agostino). Following Helmholtz, Hertz established the “Bild conception” for scientific theories. Here, “Bild” (“picture”) carries the meaning “model” (mathematical). The main aim of natural sciences is construction of the causal theoretical models (CTMs) of natural phenomena. Hertz claimed that a CTM cannot be designed solely on the basis of observational data; it typically contains hidden quantities. Experimental data can be described by an observational model (OM), often based on the price of acausality. CTM-OM interrelation can be tricky. Schrödinger used the Bild concept to create a CTM for quantum mechanics (QM), and QM was treated as OM. We follow him and suggest a special CTM for QM, so-called prequantum classical statistical field theory (PCSFT). QM can be considered as a PCSFT image, but not as straightforward as in Bell’s model with hidden variables. The common interpretation of the violation of the Bell inequality is criticized from the perspective of the two-level structuring of scientific theories. Such critical analysis of von Neumann and Bell no-go theorems for hidden variables was performed already by De Broglie (and Lochak) in the 1970s. The Bild approach is applied to the two-level CTM-OM modeling of Brownian motion: the overdamped regime corresponds to OM. In classical mechanics, CTM=OM; on the one hand, this is very convenient; on the other hand, this exceptional coincidence blurred the general CTM-OM structuring of scientific theories. We briefly discuss ontic–epistemic structuring of scientific theories (Primas–Atmanspacher) and its relation to the Bild concept. Interestingly, Atmanspacher as well as Hertz claim that even classical physical theories should be presented on the basic of two-level structuring. Full article

The old concept of eidos summed up those of “form” and “image” of an object; this is the subject covered here, supporting a realistic theory of conception and design, as opposed to the anti-realism of the postmodern age and its media conception of “image”. Nowadays it is believed that some ways of conceiving the form and image of the artefacts—according to the current tendency towards naturalisation in social science, which has followed the converging technological and scientific progress of the third industrial revolution—derive from particular morphogenetic (ontogenetic and phylogenetic) models developed in natural science. From this point of view, the subject of “natural images” has become a central issue, which can be interpreted in two considerably different meanings: (1) as perceptual characteristics of natural environments; (2) as a format of visions. The issue of “natural images” (by incorporating the meanings 1–2) is a morphological matter, which is highly relevant to both the natural (cognitive) and cultural (anthropologic) points of view in visual studies and theory of images. In other words, the topic allows some remarks on the ways the concepts of “form” and “image” equally concern Naturalia and Artificialia. This difference measures the complexity of the issue that we exemplify only in the case of cellular automata, but with a particular focus on the simultaneous new emerging meanings of the term “image”. The different specific meanings of “image” articulate the themes of the essay: from the image interpreted as shape, eidos and Bild—i.e., as objective geometry (the shape of things)—to its definition in terms of Gestalt, i.e., as subjective geometry (format of perception). Full article