…m the description and explanation of empirical fact, as is the language of prescription and justification. Although Sellars was concerned with the philosophy of mind, there is something important here for philosophers of physics to learn as well. A major activity of physics is the collection of empirical facts. Another is the prediction and justification of these facts. But the activity of investigating meaning is a distinct activity altogether. T…
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…review over at Backreaction. My favorite two of her many suggestions are: Online interface for anonymous author-reviewer communication. Why keep the slow (and frankly archaic) editor-mediated communication between author and reviewer, when everyone has access to the interwebs? An anonymized online interface would be quicker, easier, and more useful. In particular, it would allow for quick clarificatory questions, and even back-and-forth discussio…
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…asic quantum theory and of general relativity. From GR, we need only the causal structure of black holes (which is now well accepted, and if we’re wrong about it, then there are no black holes anyway). And from QT we need little more than quantum fluctuations (consisting of particle/anti-particle pairs), which we have good empirical reason to believe in. So this isn’t one of those weird fringe cases where “quantum theory and gravity don’t mix.” As…
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…ery-day objects, design experiments illustrating all the canonical quantum effects. There are different ways of breaking down what these effects are, but here’s one way of doing it. Design “every-day” experiments of the following three phenomena: Discrete energy values (e.g., a blackbody radiation experiment); General diffraction (outside the scope of classical E&M); and Coherent superposition. These phenomena together are sufficient to give us mu…
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…our ignorance of the nature of heat, we are left to carefully observe its effects, which principally consist in the dilation of bodies, the rendering of fluids, and the conversion into vapor (Lavoisier and Laplace 1783, 153-154). Lavoisier and Laplace then go on to suggest a way of translating between caloric and dynamical theories of heat: Free caloric :: Force vive Combining of caloric :: Loss of force vive Disengaging of heat :: Augmentation o…
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