The contributions gathered here demonstrate how categorical ontology can provide a basis for linking three important basic sciences: mathematics, physics, and philosophy. Category theory is a new formal ontology that shifts the main focus from objects to processes. The book approaches formal ontology in the original sense put forward by the philosopher Edmund Husserl, namely as a science that deals with entities that can be exemplified in all spheres and domains of reality. It is a dynamic, processual, and non-substantial ontology (...) in which all entities can be treated as transformations, and in which objects are merely the sources and aims of these transformations. Thus, in a rather surprising way, when employed as a formal ontology, category theory can unite seemingly disparate disciplines in contemporary science and the humanities, such as physics, mathematics and philosophy, but also computer and complex systems science. (shrink)

The spectral fluctuations of quantum (or wave) systems with a chaotic classical (or ray) limit are mostly universal and faithful to random-matrix theory. Taking up ideas of Pechukas and Yukawa we show that equilibrium statistical mechanics for the fictitious gas of particles associated with the parametric motion of levels yields spectral fluctuations of the random-matrix type. Previously known clues to that goal are an appropriate equilibrium ensemble and a certain ergodicity of level dynamics. We here complete the reasoning by establishing (...) a power law for the ħ dependence of the mean parametric separation of avoided level crossings. Due to that law universal spectral fluctuations emerge as average behavior of a family of quantum dynamics drawn from a control parameter interval which becomes vanishingly small in the classical limit; the family thus corresponds to a single classical system. We also argue that classically integrable dynamics cannot produce universal spectral fluctuations since their level dynamics resembles a nearly ideal Pechukas–Yukawa gas. (shrink)

I show how classical and quantum physics approach the problem of randomness and probability. Contrary to popular opinions, neither we can prove that classical mechanics is a deterministic theory, nor that quantum mechanics is a nondeterministic one. In other words it is not possible to show that randomness in classical mechanics has a purely epistemic character and that of quantum mechanics an ontic one. Nevertheless, recent developments of quantum theory and increasing experimental possibilities to check its predictions call for returning (...) to the problem of comparing possibilities given by classical and quantum physics to accommodate and prove the existence of a `genuine randomness'. Recent results concerning `amplification of randomness' show that, in certain sense, quantum physics is in fact ‘more random’ that classical and outperforms it in producing a `truly random process'. (shrink)

Starting from logical structures of classical and quantum mechanics we reconstruct the logic of so-called no-signaling theories, where the correlations among subsystems of a composite system are restricted only by a simplest form of causality forbidding an instantaneous communication. Although such theories are, as it seems, irrelevant for the description of physical reality, they are helpful in understanding the relevance of quantum mechanics. The logical structure of each theory has an epistemological flavor, as it is based on analysis of possible (...) results of experiments. In this note we emphasize that not only logical structures of classical, quantum and no-signaling theory may be treated on the same ground but it is also possible to give to all of them a common ontological basis by constructing a “phase space” in all cases. In non-classical cases the phase space is not a set, as in classical theory, but a more general object obtained by means of category theory, but conceptually it plays the same role as the phase space in classical physics. (shrink)

Leibniz’s _principium identitatis indiscernibilium _excludes the existence of two different objects possessing all properties identical. Although perfectly acceptable for macroscopic systems, it becomes questionable in quantum mechanics, where the concept of identical particles is quite natural and has measurable consequences. On the other hand, Leibniz’s principle seems to be indispensable when we want to individuate an item and ascribe to it particular property (e.g. value of the projection of spin on a chosen axis). We may thus abandon the principle on (...) the quantum level, claiming it falsity here, or (better) try to find other ways of individuation of objects, possibly by adopting appropriately the very concept of it. All these problems, and many other connected with identity and indiscernibility of quantum objects, are thoroughly discussed in the book of Tomasz Bigaj, unique in the world literature due to its comprehensiveness. (shrink)