Sharif Digital Repository

The term “scientific naturalism” is the invention of Thomas H. Huxley. He used it to describe a philosophical outlook that shunned the supernatural and adopted empirical science as the only reliable basis of knowledge about the physical, social, and moral worlds. Recent decades have witnessed a flurry of philosophical activity in the name of naturalism. Most contemporary philosophers identify themselves as naturalist, and much recent work in philosophy can be seen as part of general trend toward conducting philosophical inquiry under the umbrella of naturalistic assumptions. Today the label “naturalism” refers to a particular worldview. Nevertheless, naturalism is not a clearly defined... 

This thesis seeks to demonstrate the importance (important status) of “subject” and “question” in science and also wants to show that choosing this issue is affected by values. There are various values, especially outside of science, which play role in subject choices made by scientists, scientific institutions and scientific policies, and therefore influence science by this way. So after giving an account of the term “scientific choice”, which has been proposed by Alvin Weinberg in 1963, we try to examine the impact of values on scientific choices and then the impact of these choices on science itself. In order to do this, we introduced choices in science and Weinberg’s index for them in... 

In recent decades, the growing number of eminent contemporary physicists, including Weinberg, Penrose, Isham, Susskind and etc. have doubted about the durability of quantum theory, and in the last year Weinberg, after analyzing the well-known interpretations of Standard quantum theory sees all of them as difficult and concludes that quantum theory needs to be replaced by a more comprehensive theory. The purpose of this dissertation is to analyze the critiques of Weinberg and others to the standard quantum theory and to study some of the alternative theories proposed, including the Bohemian quantum theory and the holographic universe  

The1935 EPR thought experiment, introduced the concept of entanglement of quantum states, and this brought up the problems of faster than light signaling and faster than light influencing.The quantum entanglement has becomeone of the most important aspects of quantum information in the last thirty years.But the standard quantum theory has not been able to solve the dilemma of quantum entanglement and has confined itselfto deny faster than light signaling, but admitting faster than light influencing.But the followers of Bohmian mechanics,which have appealed to hidden variables,see no problem with quantum entanglement.The aim of this thesis is to compare the status of the standard quantum... 

In spite of succesfull achievements of standard quantum mechanics in describing variety of physical phenomenons, this theory has some conceptual problems in some areas. One of the important problems is the behavior of macroscopic objects and their interaction with microscopic systems, which is called “measurement problem”. Actually because the standard quantum mechanic is linear, it anticipates the occurrence of superposition of macroscopic states which is in contrast with our understanding of macroscopic objects. The standard theory answers this problem by using the wave function reduction principle.
There has been various proposals about the mechanism of wave function reduction,... 

The relation of mind and brain has always been a fundamental and challenging problem for science. The study of this subject with the help of modern physics, considering the failure of classical physics and materialistic philosophy in explaining spiritual and mental phenomena, has attracted the attention of contemporary eminent physicist and biologists. This area is known as "quantum consciousness" and involves theories about mind and brain. Among these theories are: Eccles-Beck theory, Heisenberg-James theory (presented by Stapp) and Penrose-Hameroff theory. In dealing with the problem of mind-matter interaction and consciousness, modern physics, psychology and some philosophical schools are... 

The history of an Episteme is part of that Episteme. Without understanding the history of Episteme, one cannot get the right understanding of the Episteme. In order to understand the current coordinates of philosophy in Iran (as well as understanding the current state of philosophy in Iran), it must examine the history of its emergence and development. Part of the sources of recognition of this history is the “Erlbnis” of those who lived the event. Those who have been trying for its birth and development. Some other sources in understanding this history are the previous published works in this area. Another is the educational effort and the establishment and development of the institutions... 

The purpose of this study is to investigate the causes and reasons of the decline of Iran. The beginnings of decline can be traced to factors such as determinism, esotericism, fundamentalism, the absence of skilled men, as well as the lack of a stable legal system and the emigration of Iranians to foreign countries. Lack of attention and lack of thought about the causes of the decline of Iranian civilization is the main problem of Iran's backwardness. On the other hand, this is the main reason for the growth of Western civilizations. Westerners have made good use of this feature and provided the means for their civilization to flourish. The lack of the concept of decline in a culture does... 

According to Penrose-Hameroff's theory, Consciousness as an undeniable reality can, in some cases, be explained by a kind of orchestrated objective reduction of the wave function in the cytoskeleton of the brain neurons. Here, I have presented the subject, problem, and claim of this theory, as well as its argument, which consists of three main premises. In the first premise, first by rejecting the opposing theories and then by presenting reasons, it is shown that human thinking is, in some manner, sound but non-computable, and at the same time, accepting the Non-computability of human thinking requires believing in the objects in the universe that are non-computable, but They can be... 

The idea of "vacuum energy" with definition of the "Aether" has many historical backgrounds from Aristotelian philosophy to 19th century and the advent of quantum vacuum. Some assert vacuum which is defined as "pure void" and others have got contrary viewpoints. It can be said that the history of vacuum is as old as history of physics. With the advent of quantum mechanics, vacuum has taken a specific definition. Vacuum from vision of quantum mechanics describes that vacuum is the minimum possible energy state, because if the energy of "quantum vacuum state" became zero, Heisenberg uncertainty principle would be violated. The important consequence of quantum mechanics will be in apparent... 

If we accept that there is a thing called “religious Science”, then we should accept that, all of its scientific elements should be based on, or be compatible with religion (in its general meaning). So, here is the question: Is there a particular “religious methodology” required for the “religious science”? Does “religious”, as an adjective also applies to methodology of science? Anyway, if we want to generate “religious science” based on religious foundations, we should characterize our position about “methodology of religious science”. Negligence of this important subject would cause a theoretical vacuum in discussions about religious science. In this thesis, after explaining some general... 

Neutrino flavor oscillations are clear evidence of massive neutrinos. It has been for more than a decade that neutrino physics became one of active topics in the field of particle physics and various experiments started studying the flavor oscillation of neutrinos. Unfortunately, experiments studying the flavor oscillations are only sensitive to the mass square difference, and they are incapable of providing more information about the absolute mass scale of neutrinos. Additionally, sterile neutrinos having non-standard interactions are under vast investigations and studies. Determination of neutrino masses and their effective number is among the most challenging problems by which... 

Few years the traditional medicine in our society is considered: Traditional colleges have been established, Traditional medicine has been established and numerous media programs produced by experts in traditional medicine. All this indicates is that traditional medicine seek lost credibility and gain its rightful place in our society today. One of the most important aspects of the relationship between traditional medicine with modern medicine. On the one hand trying to make traditional medicine with modern medicine can be defined as complementary medicine. In this regard, first of all defined traditional medicine as a specialty, and efforts to rebuild the achievements of traditional... 

In this thesis, inspired by foundational discussions about the concepts of energy and entropy in the gravitational theory, we study the definitions of these concepts and the roles they play in that theory. The definitions considered in this thesis are derived from canonical formalism. To this end, first of all, the variational principle and the canonical structure in the gravitational theory, especially in situations where the spacetime is bounded, is carefully studied and the boundary and corner actions as well as the canonical structure on the boundaries in three cases of non-null, null and general boundaries are derived. Based on this study, two canonical approaches, namely the... 

The search for an empirically proven quantum theory of gravity is one of the greatest open problems of fundamental physics. Obstacles are formal and conceptual in nature. Our goal is to find a theory that somehow unites general relativity (Einstein's classical field gravity theory) and quantum field theory. In this research work, the problem of quantum gravity and the reason for its importance are investigated, as well as the proposed solutions; and what philosophical issues do these approaches and the issue itself create. Research has been carefully selected to remain managed in terms of size and content, however, some basic formalism is introduced to enter physics and the philosophy of... 

Despite the astonishing successes of quantum mechanics, due to some fundamental problems such as the measurement problem and quantum arrival time problem, the predictions of the theory are in some cases not quite clear and unique. Especially, there are various predictions for the joint spatiotemporal distribution of particle detection events on a screen, which are derived from different formulations and interpretations of the quantum theory. Although the differences are typically small, we show that these predictions can be experimentally distinguished by a proposed unconventional double-slit configuration, which is realizable using present-day single-atom interferometry. Furthermore, we... 

In 1917 Einstein used Λ as a cosmological constant in his theory of general relativity, but after a while he receded for some reasons. This constant has been reconsidered again recently. But using it in general relativity has caused some problems. In this thesis, after a short review of important elements in studying cosmological constant problem, like a short introduction to general relativity and cosmology in the first chapter as well as a short review of quantum field theory and supersymmetry in the second chapter, we will study the history and introduction of the problem in the third chapter.in the third chapter , different solutions to this problem ,like supersymmetry,anthropic... 

Acceleration of the universe is one of the most challenging conundrum of contemporary physics. One of the leading approach to this conundrum is introducing a new component in Einstein’s equations which is called the dark energy. Dark energy models which their’s dynamics are dictated by holographic principle, are called holographic dark energy. Essentially,the constraint implied by the holographic principle is a macroscopic constraint. In consequence, the constraint gives no informations about microscopic aspects of dark energy. To understand the nature of the holographic dark energy, we need a microscopic theory from which we can extract the behaviors of holographic dark energy. It can be... 

From 1990’s the Cosmological Constant Problem was brought back to spotlight and physicists have tried to find out its source. But the value that particle physic anticipates for cosmological constant is not harmonic with cosmological considerations. This thesis investigates the studies in this field  

There are different approaches in modifications of General Relativity as the theory of gravity. The modified theories of gravity are important cases in this context, which mostly start by modifying the Einstein-Hilbert action, while keeping the general covariance. Within the modified theories of gravity, we consider two cases. The first is the f(R) theories of gravity, and the second is curvature squared theories of gravity with an action like S = ∫d4x pg( 116GR + (R)2 + R2 +(R)2). Curvature squared theories of gravity have interesting feautures, most important of which is renormalizability, in contrast with General Relativity. But this advantage, as noted by K.S. Stelle in 1977 comes at...