Basilica of San Bernardino, L'Aquila
The main aim of the conference is to ponder over interest and relevance of fundamental aspects of physics. On such a topic there is an old and noble tradition, e.g. the celebrated debate on quantum mechanics and the analysis of Wigner on the role of mathematics in the description of real world.
Beyond the disciplinary relevance of these subjects in the history of Science, there is nowadays a specific interest to reconsider fundamental aspects in the light of modern experimental and theoretical achievements. Let us mention the well known expert of statistical physics S.K. Ma, who stated explicitly: "Today the development of statistical mechanics has reached the point of delving into its origin."
For instance a challenging frontier in modern statistical physics is concerned with systems with a small number of degrees of freedom, far from the thermodynamic limit. Such topics beyond the general interest have a practical relevance e.g. for the manipulation of biological and man-made objects at micro- and nano- scales.
In a similar way, Bell's theorem and Bell's inequalities triggered a considerable amount of new studies in the foundation of Quantum Mechanics. At the same time notable experimental results on the border between classical and quantum behavior stimulated new theoretical investigations about dynamics of entanglement and environment induced decoherence.
In the last decade, the possibility of extracting knowledge by data mining, as well as the progress in artificial intelligence, seem to suggest the emergence of a new scientific methodology mainly based on the algorithmic analysis of large amounts of data. These new tools force us to face and reconsider the old problem of the role of models, simulation and theory in the description of real world.
