Einstein’s Quantum Error: An Approach to Rationality
Simon Altmann
Jul 2018 · Cambridge Scholars Publishing
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130
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About this ebook
What is it to be rational? This is the fundamental subject of this book as long as we concern ourselves to thinking about the physical world. It used to be thought by philosophers that rational thinking required the use of principles that are absolutes, that have universal application and require no justification. This book argues that this is not so, that such principles as are used in discussing the physical world must in some way be empirically justified. The principle of causality, for instance, as this book shows, reflects the structure of the brain’s neural network – as created by the process of evolution – which is such that repeated inputs reinforce their relation to their effects. Therefore, it parallels in some way the structure of the physical world, at least insofar as the interactions of the latter with our cognitive system have guided the brain’s evolution.
This book also discusses the various attacks on science and rationality that emerged during the twentieth century, and discusses very carefully the implications on the philosophy of science of the Theory of Evolution. A very unusual feature of this book is that it contains a number of poems attached at the end of certain chapters. These poems are not the usual “science poems” that are no more than the lyrical thoughts of some poets about science. They are designed to illustrate definite events in the history of science and some of the important philosophical or theological problems associated with them.
About the author
Simon Altmann received his MA from the University of Oxford and his PhD in Theoretical Physics from King’s College London. He is a Fellow Emeritus at the University of Oxford, having previously served as a University Lecturer in the Theory of Metals with Professorial Status and as Tutor in Mathematical Physics and Vice-Principal at Brasenose College. His publications include eight books on mathematics, philosophy of nature, and history and philosophy of science and mathematics. He is also the author of a fictionalised autobiography and a collection of 230 poems, in addition to 80 scientific papers.
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