Dear Colleagues,

Minkowski Institute Press invites contributions to the volume "Truth in Physics: On the Nature of Physical Theories":

https://www.minkowskiinstitute.com/mip/books/truthinphysics.html

The reasons for publishing this volume are summarized below (and at the above site).

Associated with the Minkowski Institute in Montreal, Minkowski Institute Press (https://www.minkowskiinstitute.com/mip/books/) is an academic publisher run by academics for academics. As of August 2026, it has published 102 books.

As Minkowski Institute Press publishes valuable books that are out of print and are now in the public domain (the books are typeset in LaTeX), any suggestions for the publication of such books are always appreciated.

If interested, reply to this message or to mip@minkowskiinstitute.com 

Best wishes,

Vesselin Petkov

One of the Founders and current

director of Minkowski Institute

https://www.minkowskiinstitute.com/

Montreal, Canada

Personal Site: https://vesselinpetkov.com

The main reason for this project (volume) is the concern that some meta-theoretical misconceptions might be behind the lack of major breakthroughs in fundamental physics as revolutionary as the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics despite the efforts of many brilliant physicists and the unprecedented advancements in applied physics and technology which made it possible to increase enormously the precision of experiments that can test new hypotheses in the search for more fundamental physics.

An example of such misconceptions is the inadequate view on the nature of physical theories (held by some physicists) that physical theories are only descriptions of physical phenomena, which do not tell us anything certain about the world since different theories can provide different descriptions of the same phenomena. Part of the art of doing physics is to determine whether some theories are indeed "just descriptions" - like the Newtonian, Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formulations of classical mechanics - or represent real features of the world.

Consider an even more specific example: starting with Hermann Minkowski, many physicists, mathematicians, and philosophers have regarded spacetime as a real four-dimensional world, whereas others, starting with Poincaré, have viewed it as a 'mathematical continuum.' Those who argued - explicitly or implicitly - that spacetime is not physically real because it is nothing more than a mathematical space fail to answer even a self-evident question: How could a mathematician announce the introduction of a mere mathematical space with such excitement?