Condensed concepts

What do we mean when we say something in science is fundamental? When is an entity or a theory more fundamental or less fundamental than something else? For example, are quarks and leptons more fundamental than atoms? Is statistical mechanics more fundamental than thermodynamics? Is physics more fundamental than chemistry or biology? In a fractional quantum Hall state, are electrons or the fractionally charged quasiparticles more fundamental? Answers depend on who you ask. Physicists such as Phil Anderson, Steven Weinberg, Bob Laughlin, Richard Feynman, Frank Wilczek, and Albert Einstein have different views. In 2017-8, the Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi) held an essay contest to address the question, “What is Fundamental?” Of the 200 entries, 15 prize-winning essays have been published in a single volume. The editors give a nice overview in the Introduction. This post is mostly about the essay, Fundamental? of the first prize winner, Emily Adlam , a philosopher of physics. Sh

I am interested in analogues between cognitive science and artificial intelligence. Emergent phenomena occur in both, there have been some fruitful cross-fertilisation of ideas, and the extent of the analogues is relevant to debates on fundamental questions concerning human consciousness. Given my general ignorance and confusion on some of the basics of neural networks, AI, and deep learning, I am looking for useful and understandable resources. Related questions are explored in a nice informative article from 2017 in Quanta magazine,  New Theory Cracks Open the Black Box of Deep Learning  by Natalie Wolchover. Like a brain, a deep neural network has layers of neurons — artificial ones that are figments of computer memory. When a neuron fires, it sends signals to connected neurons in the layer above. During deep learning , connections in the network are strengthened or weakened as needed to make the system better at sending signals from input data — the pixels of a photo of a dog, for

From Steve Spangler  I learnt this "party trick"  demonstration of how the polymer molecules (p olyethylene ) in a plastic bag are entangled with one another.  I was not sure that it would work as easily as it did for him. But it did!

Hard copies of my book can now be purchased directly from Oxford University Press.   After a long wait and a lot of work, it was great to finally see it in print. I am very happy with the quality of the typesetting and the figures. I look forward to getting feedback from readers.