Foundations of Science

The Biological Production of Spacetime: A Sketch of the E-series Universe
Nomura N
Space and time, which should properly be taken conjointly, are both communicatively produced and created with certain contextual perspectives-they are not independent physical entities. The standpoint of production makes the relationship between space and time comprehensible. They can either be , , or . and (or ) spacetime might shed new light on biological thinking. For general readers, this paper provides a clue regarding an alternative conceptualization of spacetime based on biology.
Phenomenology and Digital Knowledge: Introduction to the Special Issue
Ferro F and Taddio L
Entangled Assemblages: The Mutual Becoming of Food and More-than-Human Being
Van Daele W
Food and life are intimately entangled. To grasp the underlying complexity of this seemingly simple statement, this article first introduces the approach to food/eating as an assemblage enacted by various heterogeneous components, and further develops it by engaging with actor network theory and material semiotics. Thereafter the focus turns to 'entanglement', as inspired by quantum physics, to elicit the basic dynamics of the entanglement of food and more-than-human beings, conceived of as involving mutual and differential becomings within and among assemblages. The article illustrates these entangled becomings by drawing upon examples from Sri Lanka, which in an intercultural philosophical fashion serve to establish an articulation (in the sense of a connection) between the proposed abstract approach to food and some basic premises of Buddhism and Ayurveda, a South Asian health system. Overall, the article crafts a conceptual toolbox and performs ontological groundwork wherein food and human beings as entangled assemblages provide a productive, refined, and sensitive research apparatus for the intimate study of more-than-human life and organization while also spurring novel theorizations through food/eating.
Sociality and Embodiment: Online Communication During and After Covid-19
Osler L and Zahavi D
During the Covid-19 pandemic we increasingly turned to technology to stay in touch with our family, friends, and colleagues. Even as lockdowns and restrictions ease many are encouraging us to embrace the replacement of face-to-face encounters with technologically mediated ones. Yet, as philosophers of technology have highlighted, technology can transform the situations we find ourselves in. Drawing insights from the phenomenology of sociality, we consider how digitally-enabled forms of communication and sociality impact our experience of one another. In particular, we draw attention to the way in which our embodied experience of one another is altered when we meet in digital spaces, taking as our focus the themes of perceptual access, intercorporeality, shared space, transitional spaces, and self-presentation. In light of the way in which technological mediation alters various dimensions of our social encounters, we argue that digital encounters constitute their own forms of sociality requiring their own phenomenological analysis. We conclude our paper by raising some broader concerns about the very framework of thinking about digitally and non-digitally mediated social encounters simply in terms of replacement.
Mapping Manuel Sandoval Vallarta (1899-1977) Scientific Contribution
Ramos-Lara MP, Carreón-Vázquez G, Acatitla-Romero E and Mendoza-Rosas RM
This paper employs network theory, mining data and bibliometric analysis when mapping the scientific contribution of Nobel Prize candidate; Manuel Sandoval Vallarta, the first and most renowned Mexican physicist and important figure in Latin American science. Vallarta died in 1977, and the existing literature is about his life and contributions to science but not about how those are still valuable today. This paper is the first to highlight, with mapping tools, that his contributions are relevant to the international community of cosmic rays (as he was pioneer and leader), quantum mechanics and relativity. These tools delivered three findings: Identify how he built his own field of study, same as universal knowledge. Unveil that the backward and forward Vallarta citations follow a network distribution. Determine social factors that benefited or affected his scientific activities-such as World War II interrupting Vallarta's successful productivity at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Furthermore, this study confirmed the interdisciplinary nature of the mapping studies of the scientist's contributions using scientometric tools. As a result, several interesting questions arose throughout our research, some of which were answered from the history and philosophy of science. However, others need to be analyzed by experts in the fields of Vallarta. Mapping research sends an invitation to interdisciplinary dialogue/research between experts in different areas of study to better understand the process of knowledge production both, individual and collective.
Science, Dualities and the Phenomenological Map
Solari HG and Natiello MA
We present an epistemological schema of natural sciences inspired by Peirce's pragmaticist view, stressing the role of the , that connects reality and our ideas about it. The schema has a recognisable mathematical/logical structure which allows to explore some of its consequences. We show that seemingly independent principles as the requirement of reproducibility of experiments and the Principle of Sufficient Reason are both implied by the schema, as well as Popper's concept of falsifiability. We show that the schema has some power in demarcating science by first comparing with an alternative schema advanced during the first part of the 20th century which has its roots in Hertz and has been developed by Einstein and Popper. Further, the identified differences allow us to focus in the construction of Special Relativity, showing that it uses an intuited concept of velocity that does not satisfy the requirements of reality in Peirce. While the main mathematical observation connected with this issue has been known for more than a century, it has not been investigated from an epistemological point of view. A probable reason could be that the socially dominating epistemology in physics does not encourage such line of work. We briefly discuss the relation of the abduction process presented in this work with discussions regarding "abduction" in the literature and its relation with "analogy".
Waiting for Aπαταω: 250 Years Later
Wu V and Uskoković V
Scientific articles have been traditionally written from single points of view. In contrast, new knowledge is derived strictly from a dialectical process, through interbreeding of partially disparate perspectives. Dialogues, therefore, present a more veritable form for representing the process behind knowledge creation. They are also less prone to dogmatically disseminate ideas than monologues, alongside raising awareness of the necessity for discussion and challenging of differing points of view, through which knowledge evolves. Here we celebrate 250 years since the discovery of the chemical identity of the inorganic component of bone in 1769 by Johan Gottlieb Gahn through one such imaginary dialogue between two seasoned researchers and aficionados of this material. We provide the statistics on ups and downs in the popularity of this material throughout the history and also discuss important achievements and challenges associated with it. The shadow of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot is cast over the dialogue, acting as its frequent reference point and the guide. With this dialogue presented in the format of a play, we provide hope that conversational or dramaturgical compositions of scientific articles - albeit virtually prohibited from the scientific literature of the day - may become more pervasive in the future.
In Memory of Bernard Stiegler (1 April 1952-5 August 2020)
Lemmens P
Maneuvering in the Interval: Reflections on Immanent Entanglements
Wiltse H
Both perspective and leverage are needed in order to arrive at a place where it is possible to do the philosophical work required in order to adequately account for our present sociotechnical landscape. One of the key characteristics of this landscape is the collapse of scale, as things become more like and the economic incentives of surveillance capitalism turn ordinary things into surveillance devices tuned for others' profit. In this context we need a language not only of imagination and humility in the face of countless gaps between things, but also one of entanglement, care, and response-ability.
This Strange Being Called the Cosmos
Hui Y
This supplementary essay aims to respond to and clarify the misunderstandings concerning the concept of cosmotechnics, the ambiguities of the term cosmos arisen in the article "For a Cosmotechnical Event," as well as the reason for the neologism of cosmotechnics.
Rethinking Technology in the Anthropocene: Guest Editors' Introduction
Lemmens P and Van Den Eede Y
Grounding the Selectionist Explanation for the Success of Science in the External Physical World
van der Merwe R
I identify two versions of the scientific anti-realist's selectionist explanation for the success of science: Bas van Fraassen's original and K. Brad Wray's newer interpretation. In Wray's version, psycho-social factors internal to the scientific community - viz. scientists' interests, goals, and preferences - explain the theory-selection practices that explain theory-success. I argue that, if Wray's version were correct, then science should resemble art. In art, the artwork-selection practices that explain artwork-success appear faddish. They are prone to radical change over time. Theory-selection practices that explain theory-success in science are however not faddish. They are mostly stable; that is, long-lived and consistent over time. This is because scientists (explicitly or implicitly) subscribe to what I will call the testability norm: scientific theories must make falsifiable claims about the external physical world. The testability norm and not psycho-sociology explains the theory-selection practices that explain theory-success in science. Contra Wray, scientific anti-realists can then maintain that the external physical world (as expressed in the testability norm) explains theory-success.
Spin and Wind Directions I: Identifying Entanglement in Nature and Cognition
Aerts D, Arguëlles JA, Beltran L, Geriente S, Sassoli de Bianchi M, Sozzo S and Veloz T
We present a cognitive psychology experiment where participants were asked to select pairs of spatial directions that they considered to be the best example of . Data are shown to violate the CHSH version of Bell's inequality with the same magnitude as in typical Bell-test experiments with entangled spins. Wind directions thus appear to be conceptual entities connected through meaning, in human cognition, in a similar way as spins appear to be entangled in experiments conducted in physics laboratories. This is the first part of a two-part article. In the second part (Aerts et al. in Found Sci, 2017) we present a symmetrized version of the same experiment for which we provide a quantum modeling of the collected data in Hilbert space.
Relativity Theory Refounded
Aerts D
We put forward a new view of relativity theory that makes the existence of a flow of time compatible with the four-dimensional block universe. To this end, we apply the creation-discovery view elaborated for quantum mechanics to relativity theory and in such a way that time and space become creations instead of discoveries and an underlying non temporal and non spatial reality comes into existence. We study the nature of this underlying non temporal and non spatial reality and reinterpret many aspects of the theory within this new view. We show that data of relativistic measurements are sufficient to derive the three-dimensionality of physical space. The nature of light and massive entities is reconsidered, and an analogy with human cognition is worked out.
Comparative Policy Analysis and the Science of Conceptual Systems: A Candidate Pathway to a Common Variable
de Wee G
In comparative policy analysis (CPA), a generally accepted historic problem that transcends time is that of identifying common variables. Coupled with this problem is the unanswered challenge of collaboration and interdisciplinary research. Additionally, there is the problem of the rare use of text-as-data in CPA and the fact it is rarely applied, despite the potential demonstrated in other subfields. CPA is multi-disciplinary in nature, and this article explores and proposes a common variable candidate that is found in almost (if not) all policies, using the science of conceptual systems (SOCS) as a pathway to investigate the found in policy as a lynchpin in CPA. Furthermore, the article proposes a new text-as-data approach that is less expensive, which could lead to a more accessible method for collaborative and interdisciplinary policy development. We find that the SOCS is uniquely positioned to serve in an alliance fashion in the larger qualitative comparative analysis that supports CPA. Because policies around the world are failing to reach their goals successfully, this article is expected to open a new path of inquiry in CPA, which could be used to support interdisciplinary research for knowledge and knowledge policy analysis.
Conservation of Energy: Missing Features in Its Nature and Justification and Why They Matter
Pitts JB
Misconceptions about energy conservation abound due to the gap between physics and secondary school chemistry. This paper surveys this difference and its relevance to the 1690s-2010s Leibnizian argument that mind-body interaction is impossible due to conservation laws. Justifications for energy conservation are partly empirical, such as Joule's paddle wheel experiment, and partly theoretical, such as Lagrange's statement in 1811 that energy is conserved if the potential energy does not depend on time. In 1918 Noether generalized results like Lagrange's and proved a converse: symmetries imply conservation laws and vice versa. Conservation holds if and only if nature is uniform. The rise of field physics during the 1860s-1920s implied that energy is located in particular places and conservation is primordially local: energy cannot disappear in Cambridge and reappear in Lincoln instantaneously or later; neither can it simply disappear in Cambridge or simply appear in Lincoln. A global conservation law can be inferred in some circumstances. Einstein's General Relativity, which stimulated Noether's work, is another source of difficulty for conservation laws. As is too rarely realized, the theory admits conserved quantities due to symmetries of the Lagrangian, like other theories. Indeed General Relativity has symmetries and hence (at least formally) conserved energies. An argument akin to Leibniz's finally gets some force. While the mathematics is too advanced for secondary school, the ideas that conservation is tied to uniformities of nature and that energy is in particular places, are accessible. Improved science teaching would serve the truth and enhance the social credibility of science.
Man is a "Rope" Stretched Between Virosphere and Humanoid Robots: On the Urgent Need of an Ethical Code for Ecosystem Survival
Agnati LF, Anderlini D, Guidolin D, Marcoli M and Maura G
In this paper we compare the strategies applied by two successful biological components of the ecosystem, the viruses and the human beings, to interact with the environment. Viruses have had and still exert deep and vast actions on the ecosystem especially at the genome level of most of its biotic components. We discuss on the importance of the human being as contraptions maker in particular of robots, hence of machines capable of automatically carrying out complex series of actions. Beside the relevance of designing and assembling these contraptions, it is of basic importance the goal for which they are assembled and future scenarios of their possible impact on the ecosystem. We can't procrastinate the development and implementation of a highly inspired and stringent "ethical code" for human beings and humanoid robots because it will be a crucial aspect for the wellbeing of the mankind and of the entire ecosystem.
Spin and Wind Directions II: A Bell State Quantum Model
Aerts D, Arguëlles JA, Beltran L, Geriente S, Sassoli de Bianchi M, Sozzo S and Veloz T
In the first half of this two-part article (Aerts et al. in Found Sci. doi:10.1007/s10699-017-9528-9, 2017b), we analyzed a cognitive psychology experiment where participants were asked to select pairs of directions that they considered to be the best example of , and showed that the data violate the CHSH version of Bell's inequality, with same magnitude as in typical Bell-test experiments in physics. In this second part, we complete our analysis by presenting a symmetrized version of the experiment, still violating the CHSH inequality but now also obeying the marginal law, for which we provide a full quantum modeling in Hilbert space, using a singlet state and suitably chosen product measurements. We also address some of the criticisms that have been recently directed at experiments of this kind, according to which they would not highlight the presence of genuine forms of entanglement. We explain that these criticisms are based on a view of entanglement that is too restrictive, thus unable to capture all possible ways physical and conceptual entities can connect and form systems behaving as a whole. We also provide an example of a mechanical model showing that the violations of the marginal law and Bell inequalities are generally to be associated with different mechanisms.
Necessity, Entailment, Shared Agonism
Smith D
This short paper offers a series of responses to Jochem Zwier and Timothy Barker's comments on my extended paper 'Taking Exception: Philosophy of Technology as a Multidimensional Problem Space.' Part one responds to questions concerning the modality of the renewed understanding of the theme of the transcendental that was argued for in my initial paper: I argue for the deep of such a move, against any sense that it is Part two takes this consideration of modality further, considering the that a renewal of the theme of the transcendental stands to offer philosophy of technology today. I argue that the contingency of our contemporary sense of the transcendental can be precisely what makes it valuable. Whereas parts one and two turn on incisive questions posed by Zwier, part three closes by reconsidering the claims for a 'multidimensional problem space' offered in my initial paper. In response to an acute insight from Barker, I close by arguing that philosophy of technology's problem space should be explored in terms of a notion of 'shared agonism'.
The Tacit 'Quantum' of Meeting the Aesthetic Sign; Contextualize, Entangle, Superpose, Collapse or Decohere
Broekaert J
The semantically ambiguous nature of the and aspects of non-classicality of elementary matter as described by quantum theory show remarkable coherent analogy. We focus on how the ambiguous nature of the image, text and art work bears functional resemblance to the dynamics of , , , and as these phenomena are known in quantum theory. These quantumlike properties in linguistic signs have previously been identified in formal descritions of e.g. concept combinations and mental lexicon representations and have been reported on in the literature. In this approach the informationalized, communicated, mediatized conceptual configuration-of e.g. the art work-in the personal reflected mind behaves like a quantum state function in a higher dimensional complex space, in which it is time and again contextually collapsed and further cognitively entangled (Aerts et al. in Found Sci 4:115-132, 1999; in Lect Notes Comput Sci 7620:36-47, 2012). The observer-consumer of signs becomes the empowered 'produmer' (Floridi in The philosophy of information, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2011) creating the cognitive outcome of the interaction, while loosing most of any 'classical givenness' of the sign (Bal and Bryson in Art Bull 73:174-208, 1991). These quantum-like descriptions are now developed here in four example aesthetic signs; the installation by Ann Veronica Janssens (2010), the installation by David Claerbout (2010), the photograph by Richard Drew (New York Times, p. 7, September 12, 2001) and the documentary by Vilchez and Stefani (2014). Our present work develops further the use of a previously developed quantum model for concept representation in natural language. In our present approach of the aesthetic sign, we extend to -idiosyncratic-observer contexts instead of socially shared contexts, and as such also include multiple idiosyncratic creation of meaning and experience. This irreducible superposition emerges as the core feature of the aesthetic sign and is most critically embedded in the 'no-interpretation' interpretation of the documentary signal.
Epistemic Functions of Replicability in Experimental Sciences: Defending the Orthodox View
Sikorski M and Andreoletti M
Replicability is widely regarded as one of the defining features of science and its pursuit is one of the main postulates of meta-research, a discipline emerging in response to the replicability crisis. At the same time, replicability is typically treated with caution by philosophers of science. In this paper, we reassess the value of replicability from an epistemic perspective. We defend the orthodox view, according to which replications are always epistemically useful, against the more prudent view that claims that it is useful in very limited circumstances. Additionally, we argue that we can learn more about the original experiment and the limits of the discovered effect from replications at different levels. We hold that replicability is a crucial feature of experimental results and scientists should continue to strive to secure it.