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Indeterminism in physics and intuitionistic mathematics

Most physics theories are deterministic, with the notable exception of quantum mechanics which, however, comes plagued by the so-called measurement problem. This state of affairs might well be due to the inability of standard mathematics to “speak” of indeterminism, its inability to present us a wor...

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Autor principal: Gisin, Nicolas
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer Netherlands 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8727408/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35058663
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03378-z
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author Gisin, Nicolas
author_facet Gisin, Nicolas
author_sort Gisin, Nicolas
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description Most physics theories are deterministic, with the notable exception of quantum mechanics which, however, comes plagued by the so-called measurement problem. This state of affairs might well be due to the inability of standard mathematics to “speak” of indeterminism, its inability to present us a worldview in which new information is created as time passes. In such a case, scientific determinism would only be an illusion due to the timeless mathematical language scientists use. To investigate this possibility it is necessary to develop an alternative mathematical language that is both powerful enough to allow scientists to compute predictions and compatible with indeterminism and the passage of time. We suggest that intuitionistic mathematics provides such a language and we illustrate it in simple terms.
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spelling pubmed-87274082022-01-18 Indeterminism in physics and intuitionistic mathematics Gisin, Nicolas Synthese Original Research Most physics theories are deterministic, with the notable exception of quantum mechanics which, however, comes plagued by the so-called measurement problem. This state of affairs might well be due to the inability of standard mathematics to “speak” of indeterminism, its inability to present us a worldview in which new information is created as time passes. In such a case, scientific determinism would only be an illusion due to the timeless mathematical language scientists use. To investigate this possibility it is necessary to develop an alternative mathematical language that is both powerful enough to allow scientists to compute predictions and compatible with indeterminism and the passage of time. We suggest that intuitionistic mathematics provides such a language and we illustrate it in simple terms. Springer Netherlands 2021-09-03 2021 /pmc/articles/PMC8727408/ /pubmed/35058663 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03378-z Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Original Research
Gisin, Nicolas
Indeterminism in physics and intuitionistic mathematics
title Indeterminism in physics and intuitionistic mathematics
title_full Indeterminism in physics and intuitionistic mathematics
title_fullStr Indeterminism in physics and intuitionistic mathematics
title_full_unstemmed Indeterminism in physics and intuitionistic mathematics
title_short Indeterminism in physics and intuitionistic mathematics
title_sort indeterminism in physics and intuitionistic mathematics
topic Original Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8727408/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35058663
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03378-z
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