Two Pictures of Laws and Initial Conditions
Chris Wüthrich over at Taking Up Spacetime has an interesting post about laws and initial conditions, and an old objection by Sklar (1984). The post started me thinking about an…
Read moreReasons to love the "Dark Energy Task Force"
It’s official: the words ‘dark,’ ‘energy,’ ‘task,’ and ‘force’ have all been used in the title of a single scientific paper. The “Report of the Dark Energy Task Force” is…
Read more1907 Crisis in Mathematical Physics According to Poincaré
With 20-20 hindsight, we all agree that Einstein’s discoveries of 1905 revolutionized nearly every area of fundamental physics. But what did scientists think at the time? One telling source is Poincaré’s 1907 account of…
Read moreKeep your caffeine tank at its optimum level
Keeping your caffeine tank full is an essential part of history, philosophy and physics. Follow this easy chart to keep your caffeine intake at its optimum level. (Data from Wisebread.com.) Related…
Read moreTranslation of the long-lost Descartes letter
Amazingly, a long-lost letter by Descartes was recently recovered from the Haverford College outside Philadelphia. The letter’s discoverer, historian Erik-Jan Bos at the University of Utrecht, has now produced an English…
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