On Monday, February 10, 2020 at 7:35:44 AM UTC-6, scerir wrote: > > Physics and the Totalitarian Principle > Helge Kragh > <https://arxiv.org/search/physics?searchtype=author&query=Kragh%2C+H> > (Submitted on 10 Jul 2019) > https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.04623 > > What is sometimes called the "totalitarian principle," a metaphysical > doctrine often associated with the famous physicist Murray Gell-Mann, > states that everything allowed by the laws of nature must actually exist. > The principle is closely related to the much older "principle of > plenitude." Although versions of the totalitarian principle are well known > to physicists and often appear in the physics literature, it has attracted > little reflection. Apart from a critical examination of the origin and > history of the totalitarian principle, the paper discusses this and the > roughly similar plenitude principle from a conceptual perspective. In > addition it offers historical analyses of a few case studies from modern > physics in which reasoning based on the totalitarian principle can be > identified. The cases include the prediction of the magnetic monopole, the > hypothesis of radioactive protons, and the discovery of the muon neutrino. > Moreover, attention is called to the new study of metamaterials. > > "Feynman later commented on his path integral approach to quantum > mechanics as follows (Feynman, Leighton and Sands 1966, p. 19-9): > Is it true that the particle doesn’t just “take the right path” but that > it looks at all the other possible trajectories? … The miracle of it all > is, of course, that it does just that. That’s what the laws of quantum > mechanics say. [*The principle of least action*] isn’t that a particle > takes the path of least action, but that *it smells all the paths in the > neighborhood and chooses the one that has the least action*. >
Interesting. https://twitter.com/philipthrift/status/1226948036124954627 @philipthrift -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/41fb1a5e-2dc8-4cf2-88cf-ea12f9969a58%40googlegroups.com.
