Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Logic Of Scientific Discovery: How Physical Induction Affects What Is Computable, Vladik Kreinovich, Olga Kosheleva

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Most of our knowledge about a physical world comes from physical induction: if a hypothesis is confirmed by a sufficient number of observations, we conclude that this hypothesis is universally true. We show that a natural formalization of this property affects what is computable when processing measurement and observation results, and we explain how this formalization is related to Kolmogorov complexity and randomness. We also consider computational consequences of an alternative idea also coming form physics: that no physical law is absolutely true, that every physical law will sooner or later need to be corrected. It turns out that this …