29 ideas
| 17070 | Coherence is consilience, simplicity, analogy, and fitting into a web of belief [Smart] |
| 17072 | We need comprehensiveness, as well as self-coherence [Smart] |
| 20457 | Zeno assumes collecting an infinity of things makes an infinite thing [Rovelli] |
| 20468 | Quantum mechanics deals with processes, rather than with things [Rovelli] |
| 20467 | Quantum mechanics describes the world entirely as events [Rovelli] |
| 22593 | Our sensation of light may not be the same as what produces the sensation [Descartes] |
| 17073 | I simply reject evidence, if it is totally contrary to my web of belief [Smart] |
| 17077 | The height of a flagpole could be fixed by its angle of shadow, but that would be very unusual [Smart] |
| 17078 | Universe expansion explains the red shift, but not vice versa [Smart] |
| 17061 | Explanation of a fact is fitting it into a system of beliefs [Smart] |
| 17074 | Explanations are bad by fitting badly with a web of beliefs, or fitting well into a bad web [Smart] |
| 17076 | Deducing from laws is one possible way to achieve a coherent explanation [Smart] |
| 17071 | An explanation is better if it also explains phenomena from a different field [Smart] |
| 17062 | If scientific explanation is causal, that rules out mathematical explanation [Smart] |
| 17075 | Scientific explanation tends to reduce things to the unfamiliar (not the familiar) [Smart] |
| 20469 | There are probably no infinities, and 'infinite' names what we do not yet know [Rovelli] |
| 20461 | The basic ideas of fields and particles are merged in quantum mechanics [Rovelli] |
| 16569 | The Hot, Cold, Wet and Dry of the philosophers need themselves to be explained [Descartes] |
| 20964 | Descartes said there was conservation of 'quantity of motion' [Descartes, by Papineau] |
| 17063 | Unlike Newton, Einstein's general theory explains the perihelion of Mercury [Smart] |
| 20462 | Because it is quantised, a field behaves like a set of packets of energy [Rovelli] |
| 20463 | There are about fifteen particles fields, plus a few force fields [Rovelli] |
| 20464 | The world consists of quantum fields, with elementary events happening in spacetime [Rovelli] |
| 20459 | Electrons only exist when they interact, and their being is their combination of quantum leaps [Rovelli] |
| 20460 | Electrons are not waves, because their collisions are at a point, and not spread out [Rovelli] |
| 20466 | Quantum Theory describes events and possible interactions - not how things are [Rovelli] |
| 20465 | Nature has three aspects: granularity, indeterminacy, and relations [Rovelli] |
| 20458 | The world is just particles plus fields; space is the gravitational field [Rovelli] |
| 20470 | Only heat distinguishes past from future [Rovelli] |