Berlin: Springer, 1996

David Ritz Finkelstein
Department of Physics
Georgia Institute of Technology

Over the past years, physicist David Finkelstein has developed a quantum language going beyond the concepts used by Bohr and Heisenberg. The simple formal algebraic language is designed to be consistent with quantum theory. It differs from natural languages in its epistemology, modal structure, logical connections, and copulatives.

Starting from ideas of John von Neumann and in part also as a response to his fundamental work, the author bases his approach on what one really observes when studying quantum processes. This way the new language can be seen as a clue to a deeper understanding of the concepts of quantum physics, at the same time avoiding those paradoxes which arise when using natural languages. The work is organized didactically: The reader learns in fairly concrete form about the language and its structure as well as about its use for physics.

Princeton University Press, 2004

Roland Omnès
Department of Physics
University of Paris XI

The mysterious beauty, harmony, and consistency of mathematics once caused philosopher Hilary Putnam to term its existence a "miracle." Now, advances in the understanding of physics suggest that the foundations of mathematics are encompassed by the laws of nature, an idea that sheds new light on both mathematics and physics.The philosophical relationship between mathematics and the natural sciences is the subject of Converging Realities, the latest work by one of the leading thinkers on the subject. Based on a simple but powerful idea, it shows that the axioms needed for the mathematics used in physics can also generate practically every field of contemporary pure mathematics. It also provides a foundation for current investigations in string theory and other areas of physics.

This approach to the nature of mathematics is not really new, but it became overshadowed by formalism near the end of the nineteenth century. The debate turned eventually into an exclusive dialogue between mathematicians and philosophers, as if physics and nature did not exist.

This unsatisfactory situation was enforced by the uncertain standing of physical reality in quantum mechanics. The recent advances in the interpretation of quantum mechanics (as described in Quantum Philosophy, also by Omnès) have now reconciled the foundations of physics with objectivity and common sense. In Converging Realities, Roland Omnès is amongthe first scholars to consider the connection of natural laws with mathematics.

Princeton University Press, 2002

Roland Omnès
Department of Physics
University of Paris XI

In this magisterial work, Roland Omnès takes us from the academies of ancient Greece to the laboratories of modern science as he seeks to do no less than rebuild the foundations of the philosophy of knowledge. One of the world's leading quantum physicists, Omnès reviews the history and recent development of mathematics, logic, and the physical sciences to show that current work in quantum theory offers new answers to questions that have puzzled philosophers for centuries: Is the world ultimately intelligible? Are all events caused? Do objects have definitive locations? Omnès addresses these profound questions with vigorous arguments and clear, colorful writing, aiming not just to advance scholarship but to enlighten readers with no background in science or philosophy.

The book opens with an insightful and sweeping account of the main developments in science and the philosophy of knowledge from the pre-Socratic era to the nineteenth century. Omnès then traces the emergence in modern thought of a fracture between our intuitive, commonsense views of the world and the abstract and--for most people--incomprehensible world portrayed by advanced physics, math, and logic. He argues that the fracture appeared because the insights of Einstein and Bohr, the logical advances of Frege, Russell, and Godel, and the necessary mathematics of infinity of Cantor and Hilbert cannot be fully expressed by words or images only. Quantum mechanics played an important role in this development, as it seemed to undermine intuitive notions of intelligibility, locality, and causality. However, Omnès argues that common sense and quantum mechanics are not as incompatible as many have thought. In fact, he makes the provocative argument that the "consistent-histories" approach to quantum mechanics, developed over the past fifteen years, places common sense (slightly reappraised and circumscribed) on a firm scientific and philosophical footing for the first time. In doing so, it provides what philosophers have sought through the ages: a sure foundation for human knowledge. Quantum Philosophy is a profound work of contemporary science and philosophy and an eloquent history of the long struggle to understand the nature of the world and of knowledge itself.

Princeton University Press, 1999

Roland Omnès
Department of Physics
University of Paris XI

Here Roland Omnès offers a clear, up-to-date guide to the conceptual framework of quantum mechanics. In an area that has provoked much philosophical debate, Omnès has achieved high recognition for his Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (Princeton 1994), a book for specialists. Now the author has transformed his own theory into a short and readable text that enables beginning students and experienced physicists, mathematicians, and philosophers to form a comprehensive picture of the field while learning about the most recent advances.

Princeton University Press, 1994

Roland Omnès
Department of Physics
University of Paris XI

The interpretation of quantum mechanics has been controversial since the introduction of quantum theory in the 1920s. Although the Copenhagen interpretation is commonly accepted, its usual formulation suffers from some serious drawbacks. Based mainly on Bohr's concepts, the formulation assumes an independent and essential validity of classical concepts running in parallel with quantum ones, and leaves open the possibility of their ultimate conflict. In this book, Roland Omnès examines a number of recent advances, which, combined, lead to a consistent revision of the Copenhagen interpretation. His aim is to show how this interpretation can fit all present experiments, to weed out unnecessary or questionable assumptions, and to assess the domain of validity where the older statements apply. Drawing on the new contributions,

The Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics offers a complete and self-contained treatment of interpretation (in nonrelativistic physics) in a manner accessible to both physicists and students. Although some "hard" results are included, the concepts and mathematical developments are maintained at an undergraduate level.

This book enables readers to check every step, apply the techniques to new problems, and make sure that no paradox or obscurity can arise in the theory. In the conclusion, the author discusses various philosophical implications pertinent to the study of quantum mechanics..

"Biology is the science of the organizational principles that make living things living. Kauffman's book is a massive attempt to provide the foundations for a theory of such organization. . .The book is as much an explication of a specific style of scientific thinking as it is a book on adaptation, the origin of life, and ontogeny. The style of thinking can be characterized by the assumption that there are deep and simple conceptual structures that will allow us to understand life and not merely describe it. . .I hope that Kauffman's book will be a strong stimulus for many scientists to search actively for the principles that govern the organization of living states of matter." --Science

" Stuart Kauffman's book, The Origins of Order, returns the problem of evolution to the central issue that evolutionists have been avoiding for too long, the problem of the evolution of a complex, organized system that we call, appropriately, an organism. Evolutionists had better take Kauffman's arguments seriously." --Richard C. Lewontin, Harvard University

New York: Oxford University Press, 1996

Stuart A. Kauffman
Founding director of the Institute for Biocomplexity and Informatics
Professor of Biological Sciences, Physics, and Astronomy University of Calgary

A major scientific revolution has begun, a new paradigm that rivals Darwin's theory in importance. At its heart is the discovery of the order that lies deep within the most complex of systems, from the origin of life, to the workings of giant corporations, to the rise and fall of great civilizations. And more than anyone else, this revolution is the work of one man, Stuart Kauffman, a MacArthur Fellow and visionary pioneer of the new science of complexity. Now, in At Home in the Universe, Kauffman brilliantly weaves together the excitement of intellectual discovery and a fertile mix of insights to give the general reader a fascinating look at this new science--and at the forces for order that lie at the edge of chaos. What we are now only discovering, Kauffman says, is that range of spontaneous order is enormously greater than we had supposed and, in fact, self-organization is a great undiscovered principle of nature.

New York: Oxford University Press, 2002

Stuart A. Kauffman
Founding director of the Institute for Biocomplexity and Informatics
Professor of Biological Sciences, Physics, and Astronomy University of Calgary

In the tradition of Schrodinger's classic What Is Life?, this book is a tour-de-force investigation of the basis of life itself, with conclusions that radically undermine the scientific approaches on which modern science rests-the approaches of Newton, Boltzman, Bohr, and Einstein. Kauffman's At Home in the Universe, which The New York Times Book Review called "passionately written" and Nature named "courageous," introduced pivotal ideas about order and evolution in complex life systems. In investigations, Kauffman builds on these theories and finds that classical science does not take into account that physical systems--such as people in a biosphere--affect their dynamic environments in addition to being affected by them. These systems act on their own behalf as autonomous agents, but what defines them as such? By defining and explaining autonomous agents and work in the contexts of thermodynamics and of information theory, Kauffman supplies a novel answer to this age-old question, laying out a foundation for a new concept of organization and emergent general biology.

New York: Oxford University Press, 2016

Stuart A. Kauffman
Founding director of the Institute for Biocomplexity and Informatics
Professor of Biological Sciences, Physics, and Astronomy University of Calgary

A recent Scientific American article claims that "philosophy begins where physics ends, and physics begins where philosophy ends," and perhaps no better quote sums up what Kauffman's latest book offers. Grounded in his rigorous training and research background, Kauffman is inter-disciplinary in every sense of the word, sorting through the major questions and theories in biology, physics, and philosophy. Best known for his philosophy of evolutionary biology, Kauffman coined the term "prestatability" to call into question whether science can ever accurately and precisely predict the future development of biological features in organisms. As evidenced by the title's mention of creativity, the book refreshingly argues that our preoccupation to explain all things with scientific law has deadened our creative natures. In this fascinating read, Kauffman concludes that the development of life on earth is not entirely predictable, because no theory could ever fully account for the limitless variations of evolution. Sure to cause a stir, this book will be discussed for years to come and may even set the tone for the next "great thinker."

Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003

George Shields
Professor of Philosophy
Kentucky State University

Process and Analysis brings together an unprecedented collection of the world’s leading contemporary process and analytic philosophers to explore philosophical topics of common interest. The contributors examine a wide variety of explicit and implicit commonalities and differences of approach to such central philosophical issues as the nature and status of events, time, space, relations, particulars, and God.

This unique collection demonstrates that both traditions have important things to say to one another. In fact, a largely ignored conversation between the two traditions has been carried on since at least the days of Whitehead’s influence on early Cambridge analytic philosophy. This long awaited volume is an invaluable research tool for scholars and students alike working in the areas of analytic and process philosophy.

Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986

Jorge Nobo
Professor of Philosophy
Washburn University

At the base of Whitehead's philosophy of organism is a vision of the solidarity of all final actualities. Each actuality is a discrete individual enjoying autonomous self-determination, yet each also requires all other actualities as essential components and partial determinants of its own nature. This vision of universal solidarity, Nobo demonstrates, is the fundamental metaphysical thesis whose truth the categories and principles of Whitehead's philosophy were expressly designed to elucidate. The received interpretations of Whitehead's thought, Nobo shows, have ignored the mutual relevance of the solidarity thesis and the organic categoreal scheme and, for that reason, have grossly misrepresented many of Whitehead's most important metaphysical doctrines.

Contending that the difficult tasks of interpreting and developing Whitehead's metaphysics presuppose an understanding of the solidarity thesis, Nobo explores that thesis and the metaphysical categories and principles most relevant to its elucidation. In the process, he not only corrects many misinterpretations but also develops important metaphysical doctrines that Whitehead neglected to make sufficiently explicit in his published writings.

VDM Verlag, 2009

William Kallfelz
Lecturer of Philosophy and Mathematics
Departments of Philosophy and Mathematics
Mississippi State University

Robert Batterman's ontological insights are apt (nature indeed abhhors singularities), though his epistemic assessments are murky. For he writes that singularities play an essential role in certain classes of physical theories representing critical phenomena. I outline a procedure which makes essential use of Clifford Algebra to counter his claims. I use some of the demonstrated formal unity of Clifford Algebra to argue that Batterman appears to conflate a physical theory's ontology with its purely mathematical content. Carefully distinguishing the two, and employing Clifford Algebraic methods reveals a symmetry between explanation and reduction that Batterman overlooks. I refine this point by showing that the methods adopted in Clifford Algebraic computational fluid dynamics undercut many of Batterman's claims concerning the essentially explanatory role played by singularities. I also argue that the model of inter-theoretic reduction and explanation offered by Fritz Rohrlich and aspects of structuralism provide the best framework for accommodating the burgeoning research tradition of Clifford Algebra in the mathematical sciences.