A macroscopic realization of the peculiar virtual particles is presented. The classical Helmholtz and the Schrödinger equations are differential equations of the same mathematical structure. The solutions with an imaginary wave number are called evanescent modes in the case of elastic and electromagnetic fields. In the case of non-relativistic quantum mechanical fields they are called tunneling solutions. The imaginary wave numbers point to strange consequences: The waves are non-local, they are not observable, and they are described as virtual particles. During (...) the last two decades QED calculations of the solutions with an imaginary wave number have been experimentally confirmed for phonons, photons, and electrons. The experimental proofs of the predictions of non-relativistic quantum mechanics and the Wigner phase time approach for the elastic, electromagnetic and Schrödinger fields will be presented in this article. The results are zero time in the barrier and an interaction time (i.e. a phase shift) at the barrier interfaces. The measured tunneling time scales approximately inversely with the particle energy. Actually, the tunneling time is given only by the barrier boundary interaction time, as zero time is spent inside a barrier. (shrink)

A superluminal signal velocity (i.e. faster than light) is said to violate causality. However, superluminal signal velocities have been measured in tunneling experiments recently. The classical dipole interaction approach by Sommerfeld and Brillouin results in a complex refractive index with a finite real part. For the tunneling process with its purely imaginary refractive index this model obtaines a zero-time traversing of tunneling barriers in agreement with wave meechanics. The information of a signal is proportional to the product of its frequency (...) band width and its time duration. The reasons that superluminal signal velocities do not violate causality are: (i) physical signals are frequency band limited and (ii) signals have a finite time duration. (shrink)

Experiments with evanescent modes and tunneling particles have shown that (i) their signal velocity may be faster than light, (ii) they are described by virtual particles, (iii) they are nonlocal and act at a distance, (iv) experimental tunneling data of phonons, photons, and electrons display a universal scattering time at the tunneling barrier front, and (v) the properties of evanescent, i.e. tunneling modes are not compatible with the special theory of relativity.

Fifty years ago Hartman studied the barrier transmission time of wave packets (J Appl Phys 33:3427–3433, 1962). He was inspired by the tunneling experiments across thin insulating layers at that time. For opaque barriers he calculated faster than light propagation and a transmission time independent of barrier length, which is called the Hartman effect. A faster than light (FTL or superluminal) wave packet velocity was deduced in analog tunneling experiments with microwaves and with infrared light thirty years later. Recently, the (...) conjectured zero time of electron tunneling was claimed to have been observed in ionizing helium inside the barrier. The calculated and measured short tunneling time arises at the barrier front. This tunneling time was found to be universal for elastic fields as well as for electromagnetic fields. Remarkable is that the delay time is the same for the reflected and the transmitted waves in the case of symmetric barriers. Several theoretical physicists predicted this strange nature of the tunneling process. However, even with this background many members of the physics community do not accept a FTL signal velocity interpretation of the experimental tunneling results. Instead a luminal front velocity was calculated to explain the FTL experimental results frequently. However, Brillouin stated in his book on wave propagation and group velocity that the front velocity is given by the group velocity of wave packets in the case of physical signals, which have only finite frequency bandwidths. Some studies assumed barriers to be cavities and the observed tunneling time does represent the cavity lifetime. We are going to discus these continuing misleading interpretations, which are found in journals and in textbooks till today. (shrink)

Es soll ein Beitrag zur epistemischen Charakterisierung von Computersimulationen als jenseits von Experiment und Theorie geleistet werden. Es wird argumentiert, dass die in der Simulationstechnik eingesetzten Verfahren nicht numerische Lösungen liefern, sondern deren Dynamik mittels generativer Mechanismen imitieren. Die Computersimulationen in der Klimatologie werden als systematisches wie historisches Fallbeispiel behandelt. Erst "Simulationsexperimente" gestatten es, mittels Modellen eine Dynamik zu imitieren, ohne deren Grundgleichungen zu "lösen". /// Computer simulations will be characterized in epistemic respect as a method between experiment and theory. (...) It will be argued that simulations do not provide numerical solutions, rather they use generative mechanisms to imitate a dynamics. Climate science will be considered as a case both systematically and historically. Only simulation experiments allow to build models that imitate a dynamics without solving the relevant equations. (shrink)

The book focuses on the modern understanding of human life-forms as constructs that followed an evolutionary history. The author thus finds science confronted with two questions: firstly, how the transgression of the virtual threshold between natural and cultural history was possible, secondly, how the socio-cultural constructs were able to develop in the course of history the way they did. The discussion concentrates on the problem of determining a processual logic in the development of societal structures as well as in the (...) development of cognition. The focus of attention is the historico-genetic reconstruction of cognition. The book was originally published in German as Historisch-genetische Theorie der Kultur (Weilerswist 2000: Velbrück). (shrink)

I prove that there is a recursive function T that does the following: Let X be transitive and rudimentarily closed, and let X ′ be the closure of X ∪ {X } under rudimentary functions. Given a Σ0-formula φ and a code c for a rudimentary function f, T is a Σω-formula such that for any equation image ∈ X, X ′ ⊧ φ [f ] iff X ⊧ T [equation image]. I make this precise and show relativized versions of (...) this. As an application, I prove that under certain conditions, if Y is the Σω extender ultrapower of X with respect to some extender F that also is an extender on X ′, then the closure of Y ∪ {Y } under rudimentary functions is the Σ0 extender ultrapower of X′ with respect to F, and the ultrapower embeddings agree on X. (shrink)

It is well-known among historians that rhetoric was at the centre of the studia humaniora in the Italian Renaissance and an important part of education in those times. In this essay the author draws attention to three short tracts discussing the merits of rhetoric from various points of view. Ognibene da Lonigo claims in Oratio de laudibus eloquentiae that rhetoric is absolutely indispensable in all fields of human life. In Filippo Beroaldo’s Declamatio philosophi, medici et oratoris de excellentia disceptantium, the (...) orator gains the victory over his rivals. Both these writers argue mainly by citing ‘authorities’. In his Dialogus de eloquentia, Marcantonio Maioragio tries to argue by rational argument for the higher value of the studia humaniora over an exclusively Christian education. None of the three authors achieves more than plausibility for his claim. The echo of Cicero’s philosophical and rhetorical works is clearly perceptible in all of them. (shrink)

In den letzten Jahren hat sich der internationale Sport so grundlegend gewandelt, dass er in Gefahr ist, seine historisch gewachsene Identität aufzugeben. Nicht seine bildliche Qualität, seine Intensität und Spannung haben sich verändert; sie haben im Gegenteil noch zugenommen. Auf einem anderen Feld haben sich Dinge ereignet, die dem Sport einen neuen Charakter geben. Doch diese Veränderungen gehören zu einem Ausschnitt der Wirklichkeit, der auf den Fernsehbildern und in den Kommentaren nicht erkennbar ist; für die meisten Zuschauer bleibt er unsichtbar.

Bd. 1. Kritische Studien zu bürgerlichen Wissenschaftskonzeptionen.

In seiner Lehre vom Begriff, Urteil und Schluss behandelt Hegel die Gegenstände der traditionellen formalen Logik. In der Hegel-Forschung hat dieser Abschnitt der Wissenschaft der Logik vergleichsweise wenig Aufmerksamkeit gefunden. Der hier angezeigte Band erschließt jenen Abschnitt vor dem Hintergrund der gesamten Wissenschaft der Logik und problematisiert Hegels Ausführungen sowohl hinsichtlich der immanenten Nachvollziehbarkeit des Gedankens als auch unter aktuellen systematischen Gesichtspunkten. Der Band vereinigt, der Gliederung des Hegelschen Textes folgend, dreizehn thematisch abgestimmte Beiträge zu einem kooperativen Kommentar, der durch (...) eine Auswahlbibliographie ergänzt wird. (shrink)

This chapter offers a short biography of Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher and addresses his particular thoughts on musical philosophy. Schleiermacher was born on November 21, 1768. He married Henriette von Willich in 1809 and died in Berlin on February 2, 1834. Schleiermacher dealt with the first complex of questions of philosophy in his Dialectic, or the Art of Doing Philosophy and with the second in his Ethics and Outlines of a Critique of the Existing Theory of Morals. He was concerned (...) with individuality and the individual. His central concept was feeling. He made poetry the high point of his system of art. He also expressly recognized free instrumental music as a great art. His thought was especially significant for the musical culture of his own time; it formulated opinions that also determined compositional practice. (shrink)