For Federal Scientists’ Right to Communicate
Wayne C. Myrvold has started a petition in favour of Canadian scientists' right to freely communicate their results to the public.
Guest post: Roger Colbeck on the cryptographic legacy of EPR
Follow up to last-week's post on the EPR paper, a guest post by Roger Colbeck on its significance for cryptography.80 years ago, Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen put to paper an argument that the use of the wave function for describing the state of a physical system is incomplete [7]. Looking back, it is remarkable to [...]
EPR, 80 years on
Wayne C. Myrvold80 years ago, in the May 15, 1935 issue of Physical Review, a remarkable paper was published, whose impact on our thinking about the world has been substantial, in ways that would, perhaps, have astonished the authors. The paper was concerned with a very abstract point about the nature of physical reality. But [...]
Why Talk to Philosophers? Part IV.
Wayne Myrvold Here's the latest in our series of physicists writing about the value of philosophy: Ivette Fuentes on the interplay between science and philosophy (and also science and the arts!) Science and philosophy share common goals. They aim at developing and deepening our understanding of reality, at uncovering the basic constituents of the Universe [...]
Why Talk to Philosophers? Part III.
Wayne Myrvold Continuing our series of physicists writing about what they find vaulable in philosophy and in talking to philosophers, here's Lee Smolin. My knowledge of the history and philosophy of physics helps me understand the challenges, frustrations and puzzles I encounter in my research, by putting them in the context of the long history [...]
Why Talk to Philosophers? Part II.
Wayne Myrvold Continuing our series of physicists talking about why they find philosophy valuable (Part I here), here's Carlo Rovelli. The recent dismissive remarks about philosophy by Neil deGrasse Tyson reopen a debate which I think is worthwhile reopening. Neil deGrasse Tyson is not the only one to consider philosophy useless for science. Many of my [...]
Why Talk to Philosophers? Part I.
Wayne Myrvold About a month ago, I did a guest post over at New APPS that was prompted by philosophers’ responses to Neil de Grasse Tyson’s dismissive remarks about philosophy. Unsurprisingly, attitudes towards philosophy vary widely among physicists, and there are plenty of physicists who have a much more positive attitude towards philosophy. Some of [...]
Myrvold guest post at New APPS: What NdGT got right.
I've done a guest post, over at New APPS: What Neil deGrasse Tyson got right. Wayne Myrvold.
New publication: Kerry McKenzie review of Basic Structures of Reality: Essays in Meta-Physics, by Colin McGinn
by Wayne Myrvold Rotman Institute Post-doctoral Fellow in Philosophy of Science Kerry McKenzie has published a review of Colin McGinn's book, Basic Structures of Reality: Essays in Meta-Physics in Mind. To my mind, the review is of interest not only for what it says about the book in question, but for the larger questions it [...]
IPCC and the Media: Don’t be misled (again)
By Wayne Myrvold I wish that I had suggested “Don’t be fooled” for the title of Gordon McBean’s blog post earlier this week, instead of “Don’t be misled,” so that I could call this one “Don’t be fooled again.” Several of the blog posts in the past week have pointed to difficulties in communicating climate [...]