In this paper I challenge two widespread convictions about unification in physics: unification is an aim of physics and unification is driven by metaphysical or metatheoretical presuppositions. I call these external explanations of why there is unification in physics. Against this, I claim that unification is a by-product of physical research and unification is driven by basic methodological strategies of physics alone. I call this an internal explanation of why there is unification in physics. To support my claims, I will (...) investigate the actual practice undertaken in physics in paradigmatic examples of unification. (shrink)

This paper investigates the degree to which information theory, and the derived uses that make it work as a metaphor of our age, can be helpful in thinking about God’s immanence and transcendance. We ask when it is possible to say that a consciousness has to be behind the information we encounter. If God is to be thought about as a communicator of information, we need to ask whether a communication system has to pre-exist to the divine and impose itself (...) to God. If we want God to be Creator, and not someone who would work like a human being, ‘creating’ will mean sustaining in being as much the channel, the material system, as the message. Is information control? It seems that God’s actions are not going to be informational control of everything. To clarify the issue, we attempt to distinguish two kinds of ‘genialities’ in nature, as a way to evaluate the likelihood of God from nature. We investigate concepts and images of God, in terms of the history of ideas but also in terms of philosophical theology, metaphysics, and religious ontology. (shrink)

During the last fifty years, the dialogue between science and religion in Germany has gained momentum. This essay briefly describes the academic setting in Germany with denominational theology at state universities and explains the development of secularization in reunified Germany. Twenty-five years after reunification, East Germany is one of the most secular societies in the world, and religion is seen as a strange relic. This poses challenges to the interaction between science and religion in both parts of Germany. The essay (...) then presents important institutions and contributors to the interaction between science and religion in Germany over the past fifty years, emphasizing the importance of private institutes at the intersection of the academy with society, churches, and ethical challenges. (shrink)

This paper shows how key aspects of Aristotle’s core concepts of matter and motion, some of which have recently been shown to help make sense of quantum mechanical indeterminacy, align with some important results of the energy-momentum relationship of special relativity. In this conception, mobility and indeterminacy are inherently linked to each other and to materiality. Applying these ideas to massless particles, which relativity tells us move at the maximal cosmic speed, allows us to draw the conclusion that they must (...) be the most basic physical bodies, that is, mobile substances. The most familiar massless particle, the photon, constitutes light. Furthermore, because the photon composes luminous matter but cannot be decomposed into anything else more basic, it fulfills the definition of element. (shrink)

This paper puts forward an ontology that is indebted to QBism, Kant, Bohr, Schrödinger, the philosophy of the Upanishads, and the evolutionary philosophy of Sri Aurobindo. Central to it is that reality is relative to consciousness or experience. Instead of a single mind-independent reality, there are different poises of consciousness, including a consciousness to which “we are all really only various aspects of the One”. This ontology helps clear up unresolved issues in the philosophy of science, such as arise from (...) the reification of quantum states or from disregard of the universal context of science, which is human experience. It further helps clear up unresolved issues in the philosophy of mind, in particular the problem of intentionality and the dilemma posed by the mutual inclusion of self and world. (shrink)

Does a world that contains chemistry entail the validity of both the standard model of elementary particle physics and general relativity, at least as effective theories? This article shows that the answer may very well be affirmative. It further suggests that the very existence of stable, spatially extended material objects, if not the very existence of the physical world, may require the validity of these theories.