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Scientific American Guest Blog Link

I’m planning to post something new this week, but I would also like to share the link to my guest blog for Scientific American that was posted last week. The title of the piece is: To What Extent Do We See With Mathematics?

Hope you enjoy it.

New questions about infinity and how mathematics sees things

New Scientist published an article by Amanda Gefter in their August 15 issue which describes how and why the notion of infinity has come into question again. The distinction between a potential infinity (the process of something happening without end), and an actual infinity (represented, for example, by the set of real numbers) was disputed […]

Dirac and Hawking on Math and Physics

As I read more discussions of the relationship between mathematics and physics, I find that what mathematics might reveal about how physical science progresses becomes an increasingly interesting question.

I recently found the text of a lecture given by Paul Dirac in 1939. It was reproduced on the occasion of the Dirac Centennial Celebration organized […]

Things versus Relations and Objects versus Properties

In the August issue of Scientific American, Meinard Kuhlmann addresses, yet again, the conceptual difficulties inherent in the interpretations of experimental data of modern physics.

…the particle interpretation of quantum physics, as well as the field interpretation, stretches our conventional notions of “particle” and “field” to such an extent that ever more people think the […]

What can’t be sensed

Step by step, our ideas about the nature of our reality have moved far from the sensory constructions of space and time that define our immediate experience. And once fully outside the knowledge brought with sensation, we lose our footing. It’s difficult to manage ‘what can’t be sensed.’ But our conceptual difficulties with quantum mechanics […]

Finding ourselves between physics and biology

The Institute of Physics (IOP) Biological Physics Group has a conference coming up June 24 to June 26 in Brighton, UK. The title of the conference is what first got my attention: Physics of Emergent Behavior/From single cells to groups of individuals.

The following text appears on the conference home page to introduce their interest […]

What’s the tool, what’s the reality, what are we doing?

I am intrigued by the current debate in physics concerning the significance of the wave function in quantum theory. The nature of the debate opens the door to a host of philosophical issues surrounding both physics and mathematics. In an article appearing in the June issue of Scientific American, I was introduced to a relatively […]

Multiverse, busses and emergent space-time

There was once what many call a ‘foundational crisis in mathematics’ – disputes among mathematicians about both their ideas and their methods. But while one needn’t now address the relationship between mathematics and reality in order to pursue a successful career in mathematics, the conceptual and experimental puzzles of modern physics likely reflect a similar […]

Quantum mechanical biology

In my guest blog for Scientific American, I wrote about the work of Bob Coecke who has designed a graphical mathematics, based on a branch of mathematics called category theory. He uses this diagrammatic calculus to describe and investigate quantum mechanical processes. Coecke’s work has found application in biology and linguistics, suggesting some interesting links […]

Quantum Mechanical Words and Mathematical Organisms

My post appeared on the Scientific American Guest Blog this morning. Here’s the link:

Quantum Mechanical Words and Mathematical Organisms