Physics and the Totalitarian Principle Helge Kragh https://arxiv.org/search/physics?searchtype=author&query=Kragh%2C+H (Submitted on 10 Jul 2019) https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.04623
> What is sometimes called the "totalitarian principle," a metaphysical > doctrine often associated with the famous physicist Murray Gell-Mann, states > that everything allowed by the laws of nature must actually exist. The > principle is closely related to the much older "principle of plenitude." > Although versions of the totalitarian principle are well known to physicists > and often appear in the physics literature, it has attracted little > reflection. Apart from a critical examination of the origin and history of > the totalitarian principle, the paper discusses this and the roughly similar > plenitude principle from a conceptual perspective. In addition it offers > historical analyses of a few case studies from modern physics in which > reasoning based on the totalitarian principle can be identified. The cases > include the prediction of the magnetic monopole, the hypothesis of > radioactive protons, and the discovery of the muon neutrino. Moreover, > attention is called to the new study of metamaterials. > "Feynman later commented on his path integral approach to quantum mechanics as follows (Feynman, Leighton and Sands 1966, p. 19-9): Is it true that the particle doesn’t just “take the right path” but that it looks at all the other possible trajectories? … The miracle of it all is, of course, that it does just that. That’s what the laws of quantum mechanics say. [The principle of least action] isn’t that a particle takes the path of least action, but that it smells all the paths in the neighborhood and chooses the one that has the least action. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/2063475301.1008777.1581341741888%40mail1.libero.it.
