Borsboom, Silvester (2024) Spontaneity in Nature and its Relation to Randomness and Indeterminism. UNSPECIFIED.
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Abstract
The term ‘spontaneous’ appears in various contexts in modern physics, but it also has a long history in
natural philosophy. Its Greek analogue 'to automaton' is studied by Aristotle, and the Latin phrase 'sponte
sua' is used extensively by Lucretius. Peirce also introduces spontaneity in the context of his tychism. In
this thesis we give a historical overview of these uses of spontaneity and compare them to spontaneity
in thermodynamics and quantum mechanics. We examine the relation to quantum measurement. We
argue that in the Copenhagen interpretation, no quantum event can be said to be truly spontaneous,
but that true spontaneity does exist in spontaneous collapse theories. Finally we investigate the relation
of spontaneity to randomness and indeterminism.
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