Quantum Diaries » Byron

As long-time readers of Quantum Diaries know I have been publishing here for a number of years and this is my 85th and last post. A couple of years ago, I collected the then current collection, t...

http://www.quantumdiaries.org/2015/04/17/self-publishing/

Operational definitions are useful. They tie concepts tightly to observations where they are less likely to be dislodged by future discoveries or new models. They also help eliminate fuzzy thinki...

http://www.quantumdiaries.org/2015/02/03/operationalism/

It seems some disagreements are interminable: the Anabaptists versus the Calvinists, capitalism versus communism, the Hatfields versus the McCoys, or string theorists versus their detractors. It ...

http://www.quantumdiaries.org/2015/01/09/string-theory/

In this, the epilogue to my philosophic musing, I locate my view of the scientific method within the landscape of various philosophical traditions and also tie it into my current interest of proj...

http://www.quantumdiaries.org/2014/12/05/not-all-philosophy-is-useless/

Management done properly satisfies Sir Karl Popper’s (1902 – 1994) demarcation criteria for science, i.e. using models that make falsifiable or at least testable predictions. That was brought...

http://www.quantumdiaries.org/2014/10/10/good-management-is-science/

Isaac Asimov (1920 – 1992) “expressed a certain gladness at living in a century in which we finally got the basis of the universe straight”. Albert Einstein (1870 – 1955) claimed: “The ...

http://www.quantumdiaries.org/2014/09/05/is-the-understandability-of-the-universe-a-mirage/

René Descartes (1596 – 1650) was an outstanding physicist, mathematician and philosopher. In physics, he laid the ground work for Isaac Newton’s (1642 – 1727) laws of motion by pioneering...

http://www.quantumdiaries.org/2014/08/01/higgs-versus-descartes/

Since model building is the essence of science, this quote has a bit of a bite to it. It is from George E. P. Box (1919 – 2013), who was not only an eminent statistician but also an eminently q...

http://www.quantumdiaries.org/2014/07/04/wrong/

Theoretical physics, simplicity. Surely the two words do not go together. Theoretical physics has been the archetypal example of complicated since its invention. So what did Frank Wilczek (b. 195...

http://www.quantumdiaries.org/2014/06/06/quest-for-simplicity/

The empirical sciences, like physics and chemistry, are partially invented and partially discovered. Although the empirical observations are surely discovered, the models that describe them are i...

http://www.quantumdiaries.org/2014/05/02/mathematics/

Recently it has been announce that a smoking gun has been found for cosmic inflation but could it instead be the smoking gun for a grand conspiracy, the mother of all conspiracies, the conspiracy...

http://www.quantumdiaries.org/2014/04/01/cosmic-inflation-or-are-the-photons-messing-with-our-minds/

Despite the old canard about nobody understanding quantum mechanics, physicists do understand it.  With all of the interpretations ever conceived for quantum mechanics, this claim may seem a bit...

http://www.quantumdiaries.org/2014/03/08/nobody-understands-quantum-mechanics-nonsense/

If there were only one credible interpretation of quantum mechanics, then we could take it as a reliable representation of reality. But when there are many, it destroys the credulity of all of th...

http://www.quantumdiaries.org/2014/02/07/interpretations-of-quantum-mechanics/

In the philosophy of science, realism is used in two related ways. The first way is that the interior constructs of a model refer to something that actually exists in nature, for example the quan...

http://www.quantumdiaries.org/2014/01/10/realism-in-science/

Yes, once! Paradigm and paradigm shift are so over used and misused that the world would benefit if they were simply banned.  Originally Thomas Kuhn (1922–1996) in his 1962 book, The Structure...

http://www.quantumdiaries.org/2013/12/06/paradigm-shift/