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Record W3204804798 · doi:10.4006/0836-1398-34.3.372

Constants of nature, scientific revolutions, and simplicity

2021· article· en· W3204804798 on OpenAlexvenueno aff
Alexander Unzicker

Bibliographic record

VenuePhysics Essays · 2021
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldPhysics and Astronomy
TopicAdvanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics
Canadian institutionsnot available
Fundersnot available
KeywordsSimplicityTheoretical physicsFormalism (music)PhysicsPhysical lawEpistemologyPhysical constantConstant (computer programming)Statistical physicsQuantum mechanicsComputer sciencePhilosophy

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Since Isaac Newton, many physicists have conveyed the idea of the true laws of nature being governed by “simplicity,” a notion that has rarely been properly defined. When analyzing the history of fundamental physics until 1930, the number of constants of nature appears to be a useful measure for the complexity of theories, as opposed to the notion of simplicity. It can be observed that paradigm-shifting progress is often related to explanations of physical constants, thereby reducing their total number. Thus, it is argued that scientific revolutions are usually characterized by a pattern consisting of (1) a conceptual idea, (2) a mathematical formalism, and (3) a reduction of the number of independent constants of nature. This leads to a better understanding of the long-term impact of physical theories and may help to evaluate the current state of fundamental physics.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.003
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.007
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Theoretical or conceptual · Consensus signal: Theoretical or conceptual
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: none
Teacher disagreement score0.004
Threshold uncertainty score0.026

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0030.007
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0020.001
Science and technology studies0.0030.024
Scholarly communication0.0040.009
Open science0.0010.002
Research integrity0.0020.004
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0040.001

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.008
GPT teacher head0.264
Teacher spread0.256 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designTheoretical or conceptual
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations0
Published2021
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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