There was recently on "Nature" a discussion about Goedel's theorems and their implications in science. Maybe Heisenberg is not alone.
Tullio

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There was recently on "Nature" a discussion about Goedel's theorems and their implications in science. Maybe Heisenberg is not alone.
Tullio

Which means that you cannot exclude philosophy from science:)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_mathematics

The Gödel Prize soundtrack "The Hilbert Heartbreak Hotel" :)
https://youtu.be/7W_SJ8rUdIQ

I never said that philosophy can be excluded from science.I have a copy of the six volume "Storia del pensiero filosofico e scientifico" by Ludovico Geymonat and coworkers at the State University of Milano. I must confess that I received it after checking the translation in Italian of a Soviet book titled "The materialistic interpretation of quantum mechanics. Physics and philosophy in the USSR". Now, if there is a physical theory that has nothing to do with "Dialectic materialism" that is just quantum mechanics.
But I had to repent from having written a biography of Andrej Saharov for our "Biographical dictionary of scientists " and since the Soviet Academy of Sciences had not provided it, my boss asked me to write it and I did. So, in order to save my friend Silvano Tagliagambe, who was the editor of the book on quantum mechanics, from being sent in Siberia (he was in Moscow at the time). I did it. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
Tullio

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http://futureoflife.org/2015/12/31/2015-a-year-in-review/

A New Beginning
2015 has now come to an end, but we believe this is really just the beginning. 2016 has the potential to be an even bigger year, bringing new and exciting challenges and opportunities. The FLI slogan says, “Technology is giving life the potential to flourish like never before…or to self-destruct.” We look forward to another year of doing all we can to help humanity flourish!

Happy New Year!

as for Godel :

It means within our axiomatic system we cannot prove all valid theorems within the system-we must appeal to outside the system. There are other systems of algebra/arithmetic where this is not true. It also suggests that we may have trouble when the math we use does not explain what we see--or the math predicts something that is not true. I have suspected that this gives rise to quantum weirdness when we examine the smaller physical side of our existence.

as for Godel :
It means within our axiomatic system we cannot prove all valid theorems within the system-we must appeal to outside the system. There are other systems of algebra/arithmetic where this is not true. It also suggests that we may have trouble when the math we use does not explain what we see--or the math predicts something that is not true. I have suspected that this gives rise to quantum weirdness when we examine the smaller physical side of our existence.

Much of science are reliant to axioms.
As classically conceived, an axiom is a premise so evident as to be accepted without controversy.
Now looking at our universe from the outside is impossible.
Maybe there are other axioms that rules our multiverse.

In "Nature Physics" of 29 December there is an article about a meeting held on 7-9 December at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munchen, Germany, in which the debating point was whether theories such as strings theory and multiuniverse with no experimental support can be considered as science or instead philosophy. A physicist I know by his writings and speeches on Italian and Swiss radios, Carlo Rovelli who works at Nice, maintained that while strings theory might find some experimental evidence (none so far at LHC even at higher energy), the multiuniverse theory cannot have any experimental support and must be taken as mere philosophy.
I tend to agree with him.
Tullio

yeah, this measurement is also "philosophy"!
:D

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non-profit org. Play4Life in Zagreb, Croatia, EU

Lawrence M. Krauss of Arizona State University writes in a tweet that gravitational waves were detected by LIGO. The news awaits confirmation.
Tullio

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Gravitational waves may have been discovered:)
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/jan/12/gravitation-waves-signal-rumoured-science?CMP=twt_gu

In "Nature Physics" of 29 December there is an article about a meeting held on 7-9 December at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munchen, Germany, in which the debating point was whether theories such as strings theory and multiuniverse with no experimental support can be considered as science or instead philosophy. A physicist I know by his writings and speeches on Italian and Swiss radios, Carlo Rovelli who works at Nice, maintained that while strings theory might find some experimental evidence (none so far at LHC even at higher energy), the multiuniverse theory cannot have any experimental support and must be taken as mere philosophy.
I tend to agree with him.
Tullio

If the multiverse theory is to remain unprovable, this seems to raise an interesting problem. Our universe has many physical phenomena with parameters that are all necessary to make possible the universe as we know it, including life, and ourselves. These values, it seems, might have been different.

That they should all happen to randomly coincide to allow our existence appears very unlikely. The usual explanation for this remarkable coincidence is that there are a great many universes where the physics is different, and in only a few is life and intelligence possible.
If it can not be scientifically established that these other universes actually exist, it seems that science can not reasonably account for the existence of the universe we know, and ourselves.

it seems that science can not reasonably account for the existence of the universe we know, and ourselves

I decided that you are right about the accounting for the Universe--where the energy/matter came from and why. In time we may have a better philosophy As for life--we will produce life in the laboratory soon enough that will be above the level of a virus, and we will watch it mutate and reproduce.

A very interesting article on the physics of life appears in the January 12 issue of "Nature Physics". One of the starting point was a Heisenberg theory of 1929 on the motion of magnetized particles.
Tullio

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In "Nature Physics" of 29 December there is an article about a meeting held on 7-9 December at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munchen, Germany, in which the debating point was whether theories such as strings theory and multiuniverse with no experimental support can be considered as science or instead philosophy. A physicist I know by his writings and speeches on Italian and Swiss radios, Carlo Rovelli who works at Nice, maintained that while strings theory might find some experimental evidence (none so far at LHC even at higher energy), the multiuniverse theory cannot have any experimental support and must be taken as mere philosophy.
I tend to agree with him.
Tullio

yeah, this measurement is also "philosophy"!
:D


EDIT:
a link was never posted - https://www.newscientist.com/article/mystery-bright-spots-could-be-first-glimpse-of-another-universe/

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non-profit org. Play4Life in Zagreb, Croatia, EU

it seems that science can not reasonably account for the existence of the universe we know, and ourselves

I decided that you are right about the accounting for the Universe--where the energy/matter came from and why. In time we may have a better philosophy As for life--we will produce life in the laboratory soon enough that will be above the level of a virus, and we will watch it mutate and reproduce.

yes, the understanding of life on this planet had made some remarkable strides lately. I suppose that it will eventually be possible to synthesize life from non-living materials. This will further help our understanding of the life that has gone before.
This all applies only to our our own universe, of course, where life is known to exist.
If any one of a number of parameters were different, as we're told they very well could have been, then a persisting universe, or long-lived stars, or stable matter, or the variety of chemical elements needed for life, or suitable planets, or life-supporting chemical reactions might never have happened.
If there is no multiverse, then this all had to come out right on one try, the one we inhabit. The odds against this happening seem to be extraordinarily high.
A common scientific stance is that unless there is good evidence for something, then it does not exist. The evidence for the existence of the multiverse seems to be lacking.
The matter of our own existence seems, then to be in the realm of philosophical speculation, not science.

According to a tweet, the 11 February issue of "Nature" magazine should announce the detection of gravitational waves by the American LIGO observatories, one in Louisiana and the other in Washington State. As a volunteer of Einstein@home which crunches LIGO data, I am very interested.
Tullio

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LIGO announces a conference on next Thursday on the results of Advanced LIGO:
Conference
Tullio

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Scotland honours Mary Somerville.

For those who say Who! she helped discover Neptune.

LIGO announces a conference on next Thursday on the results of Advanced LIGO

They haven't even cranked it up to full sensitivity, AFAIK it has been run for about 3 months at 30% of it's new potential.

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According to news broadcaster ktla.com, gravitational waves have in fact been discovered.

Therefore returning back to this page in order to learn anything more, but for now apparently there is nothing more about this.

Perhaps once again I should be trying to make a separation between particles and waves.

I have watched the conference in Youtube provided by Einstein@home. I am glad that Kip Thorne and the National Science Foundation director remembered the pioneering work of Joseph Weber and his wife Virginia Trimble in the Sixties. As a physics and astronomy editor at Mondadori Edizioni Scientifiche in Milano, I had written about the Weber announce in Physical Review Letters in 1969 and was severely reprimanded by professor Antonino Zichici of the Italian National Nuclear Physics Institute who wrote a letter of protest to my director. A prophet before times is always condemned as a heretic. Viva LIGO, which gives data to Einstein@home, with which I cooperate. It is true that the signal seen by LIGO was a very short blast, while Einstein@home looks for continuous waves. But Bruce Allen, director of Einstein@home tells us that Einstein@home will widen its search method. Bravo Bruce and brava his Italian wife,Maria Alessandra Papa who wrote a good part of the Einstein@home application.
Tullio

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