Indeterminism in Physics and Intuitionistic Mathematics

Abstract

Most physics theories are deterministic, with the notable exception of quantum mechanics which, however, comes plagued by the so-called measurement problem. This state of affairs might well be due to the inability of standard mathematics to "speak" of indeterminism, its inability to present us a worldview in which new information is created as time passes. In such a case, scientific determinism would only be an illusion due to the timeless mathematical language scientists use. To investigate this possibility it is necessary to develop an alternative mathematical language that is both powerful enough to allow scientists to compute predictions and compatible with indeterminism and the passage of time. We argue that intuitionistic mathematics provides such a language and we illustrate it in simple terms.

First presented at the workshop "Experiencing Reality Directly" (Jerusalem, May 22-24, 2019)

References in corpus (2)

• Certified randomness in quantum physics
• The relativity of indeterminacy

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