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Our urge to oversimplify has led to many myths about what powered Einstein's discoveries. Naive thinking? Capricious rule-breaking? Operational thinking? I correct some myths and try to give a more accurate picture of how Einstein made two discoveries: special relativity and the light quantum. |
""How Einstein Did Not Discover"
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The received view is that a Maxwell's demon must fail to reverse the second law of thermodynamics for reasons to do with information and computation. This received view has failed, I argue, and our continuing preoccupation with it has distracted us from a simpler and more secure exorcism that merely uses the Liouville theorem of statistical physics. I extend this exorcism to the quantum case. |
"Maxwell's Demon Does not Compute." Prepared for Michael E. Cuffaro and Samuel C. Fletcher, eds., Physical Perspectives on Computation, Computational Perspectives on Physics. Cambridge University Press."
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The idea of a thermodynamically reversible process is central to thermodynamics. Yet essentially all descriptions of them over nearly two centuries are internally contradictory. They consist of equilibrium states, which are by definition unchanging in time; yet still they still change in time. I review the history and offer a solution. |
"The Impossible Process: Thermodynamic Reversibility" Draft
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Thermodynamically reversible processes cannot be completed in systems at molecular scales. They are fatally disrupted by fluctuations. This paper reviews the general result and computes two cases in detail. |
"Thermodynamically Reversible Processes in Statistical Physics." Draft
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Non-trivial calculi of inductive inference are shown to be incomplete. That is, it is impossible for a calculus of inductive inference to capture all inductive truths in some domain, no matter how large, without resorting to inductive content drawn from outside that domain. Hence inductive inference cannot be characterized merely as inference that conforms with some specified calculus. |
"A Demonstration of the Incompleteness of Calculi of Inductive
Inference" Draft
"The Ideal of the Completeness of Calculi of Inductive Inference: An Introductory Guide to its Failure" Draft |
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The replicability of experiment, the gold standard of evidence, is not supported by a universal principle of replicability in inductive logic. A failure of replication may not impugn a credible experimental result; and a successful replication can fail to vindicate an incredible experimental result.The evidential import of successful replication of an experiment is determined by the prevailing background facts. Their success has fostered the illusion of a deeper, exceptionless principle. |
"Replicability of Experiment," Theoria, 30(No. 2) (2015), pp. 229-248. Download. |
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Standard accounts of inductive inference are unstable, meriting skeptical attack. They have misidentified its fundamental nature. Accounts of inductive inference should not be modeled on those of deductive inference that are formal and non-contextual. Accounts of inductive inference should be contextual and material. I summarize the case for a material theory of induction. |
"A Material Defense of Inductive Inference." Download. |
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The inductive problem of extending the sequence 1, 3, 5, 7, is solved when these numbers are the ratios of the incremental distances fallen in successive unit times. The controlling fact is Galileo's assumption that these ratios are invariant under a change of the unit of time. It admits few laws and only one is compatible with the two-numbered initial sequence 1, 3. |
"Invariance of Galileo's Law of Fall under a Change of the Unit of Time." Download. |
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Curie's principle asserts that every symmetry of a cause manifests as a symmetry of the effect. It can be formulated as a tautology that is vacuous until it is instantiated. However instantiation requires us to know the correct way to map causal terminology onto the terms of a science. Causal metaphysics has failed to provide a unique, correct way to carry out the mapping. Thus successful or unsuccessful instantiation merely reflects our freedom of choice in the mapping. |
"Curie's Truism." Philosophy of Science, forthcoming. Download. |
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