Where did the original scope of physics in our modern scientific age come from?   Galileo, the founder of modern physics, laid down the rules which governed the scientific method to be used.  These rules were based in the first place on Galileo’s conviction that he, as the observer of physical phenomena, had no connection whatever [...]

The message from Quantum Mechanics is very clear: man and nature are intimately connected in mutual participation.  Man’s presence is in fact indispensable when it comes to the existence of natural phenomena and there is no way to interpret quantum theory without encountering consciousness.  All this runs counter to our ordinary experience of the world, [...]

If we could get into one of those wonderful Wellsian time machines, all shining oak and glass, with polished brass handles and instruments, and ride it back to some time in the latter half of the nineteenth century, we would encounter a very different world from the one of today.  Especially for Americans, it is [...]

Until Galileo and the Renaissance, man was firmly at the center of his universe, as defined and illustrated by scientists and philosophers alike.  This belief was perhaps best shown in the geocentric model of the solar system, started by the Egyptian astronomer, Ptolemy, nearly two thousand years ago, to which many others contributed before it became [...]

For Albert Einstein, arguably the greatest physicist of the twentieth century, everything in the physical world had to have an independent reality.  That is, it had to exist independently of any observation or measurement of it.  This applied to large objects as well as to particles, like the electron.  This concept of an independent realityof [...]

 
 Reality used to be a concept dealt with by philosophy and not science.  This was changed by Galileo, when he divided physical phenomena into two classes.  The first of these, what he called the “primary qualities”, were suitable for scientific treatment and analysis, because they did not depend on the presence of a person.  This [...]