The Science of the Really Small

Michael Shermer

MARTIN POHL

The third aspect of my subject is that of science as a method of finding things out. This method is based on the principle that observation is the judge of whether something is so or not. All other aspects and characteristics of science can be understood directly when we understand that observation is the ultimate and final judge of the truth of an idea. But “prove” used in this way really means “test,” in the same way that a hundred-proof alcohol is a test of the alcohol, and for people today the idea really should be translated as, “The exception tests the rule.” Or, put another way, “The exception proves that the rule is wrong.” That is the principle of science. If there is an exception to any rule, and if it can be proved by observation, that rule is wrong.

William Wilson, Joseph W. Straley

John F. Donoghue, Gabriel Menezes

In the philosophy of science, the origin of an arrow of time is viewed as problematic. We describe here how this arrow really follows from the causal structure of quantum physics. This connection is not really new -- it is just overlooked in most discussions of the arrow of time.

Michael C. Carroll

Salvatore Matteo Giacomuzzi

We will try to present critically published works on Quantum Mechanics (QM) and Psychology (perhaps more generally regarding the so called social sciences), partly by ourselves (Giacomuzzi, 2008, 2002), in an overview. It is of course impossible to give a complete summary here, but critical points should be emphasized, which perhaps leave a more differentiated view on the problems of "psychological reality". Nowadays QM is “hip” in scientific literature. But common approaches doesn`t take into consideration that physicists already 80 years ago tried to establish a connection between life sciences and physics. But do neuroscientific findings really validate essential psychological basic assumptions? Do they really open up new, interdisciplinary research perspectives? Physics itself today struggles with its theories and we`ve a big gap between on what we experience and on what we really understand. Maybe this gap of understanding our own reality is much bigger than 120 years ago when QM was born by the work of Max Planck.