2020/11/04 by Nicolas Gisin · 64 citations
Arts and Humanities · Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Calculus (dental) #Classical physics #Computer science #Determinism #Epistemology #Illusion #Indeterminism #Infinitesimal #Language of mathematics #Mathematics #Mathematics education #Metaphysics #Philosophy #Philosophy and History of Science #Philosophy of language #Philosophy of science #Physics #Quantum #Quantum Mechanics and Applications #Quantum mechanics #Simple (philosophy) #Theoretical physics #gr-qc #math-ph #math.MP #physics.hist-ph #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1007/s11229-021-03378-z
published in Synthese 199(5-6), 13345-13371 (Springer Science+Business Media) · First presented at the workshop "Experiencing Reality Directly" (Jerusalem, May 22-24, 2019)
arxiv created 2020/11/04 · openalex publication_date 2021/09/03 · arxiv updated 2021/11/04 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
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.