drewmillar

I have been trying to find a good course for me to take at university for a few months and earlier i stumbled upon a 'physics and philosophy' course at oxford. Whilst i appreciate the course requires three A's at a2 and is likely to be very costly i was wondering if, discounting those factors, the course would be a good way to spend my time at uni. Physics and Philosophy are studied in parallel during the first three years. The physics corresponds to the more theoretical side of the standard three-year Oxford physics course while the philosophy focuses on modern philosophy and particularly on metaphysics and the theory of knowledge. Students who complete the first three years can if they wish leave with a BA degree. Students going on to the MPhysPhil in the fourth year may specialise in either physics or philosophy, or continue in their study of both disciplines and their interrelations.The bridging subject, philosophy of physics, is studied in each of the first three years, and is an option in the fourth year. Specialist lectures are given in this subject together with tutorials and classes. Other final year options include a physics project or philosophy thesis. Thanks, Drew.

Hi, i need a concise description and summary of isomerisation and reformation with a couple of examples for both and how they are used for creating fuels. Also, any other ways in which fuels are altered to gain better efficiency or to be 'greener' would be great. Thanks, Drew.

Thanks tar, that was really helpful. Do you know of any books that explore that topic in greater detail?

I dont see luck as something that can affect anything in one sense. By this i mean that luck does not actually exist but is used as a comforting tool by people to explain the successes and failures of themselves and others in life. For example if a person is successful but you have not been in a particular endeavour many people would rather blame it on some feat of luck ahead their own flaws or the other persons adeptness.

This theory, if true, is quite a light-shedding one as it surely would help to explain the link between cause and effect. If everything is linked then you would assume there must be something through which it is linked, hence imparticles! Although i suppose would be nice if you could prove this, but then again even at a relatively simple level most theories are just models to explain observations.

I dont follow the link between the two?

Thanks tar, helpful summary. However, i am still a little confused as to how chance can really exist as i had previously only considered it a theory that we as humans apportioned to things that we could not possibly know. How can two things happening in exactly the same way produce a multitude of different outcomes? To bring it back to the coin toss analogy, the chance of a coin landing heads or tails is known to be 50-50, but surely that chance cannot really be accurate as it is the factors that effect the coin which determine how it lands, ie air resistance and speed of toss to name but a couple, and therefore under those specific conditions the outcome would always be the same, so the real chance would be 100-0 or 0-100. So i guess i just cant accept chance as a concept in this sense given this reasoning, although i do understand it is a useful property given that we will unlikely ever be able to comprehend the extreme complexity with which things occur. I am again reverted back to my original point of all things happening in a linear timeframe having the same outcome under identical circumstances.

Over the past couple of months my life has seemed to lack direction and no matter what i did things became no clearer until an idea regarding the age old theory of destiny came into my head. I was wondering if we could all have a set destiny laid out for us, but not by a god or any other spiritual force but by scientific reason. If my life, for example, were to be lived out a thousand times to the same exact beginning specifications then surely all instances would be exactly the same. I came onto this idea by wondering how i would do things differently and if we really have any choices to make or does the chemical make up of our brain and everything around us mean that we would always follow the same path. In short do we have a scientific destiny that can be proved using reason and is even hypothetically calculable using a computer that knows the make up of our universe. if anyone knows of any books or such things that would very helpful, thanks