Workshop

Warsaw Spacetime Colloquium: Sean Carroll (26 February on Zoom)

  • Posted on 22 February 2021
  • /Under News
On Friday, 26 February, Sean Carroll (Caltech) will give a talk entitled “From Quantum Mechanics to Spacetime” (abstract below). The meeting will take place online on Zoom (17:00-19:00 CET). If you have not registered yet, you can do so by sending a message to antonio.vassallo@pw.edu.pl. The recordings of the previous meetings are available on the ICFO’s YouTube channel. Abstract: Nine decades in, the foundations of quantum mechanics remain mysterious. Meanwhile, modern physicists puzzle over how to reconcile quantum mechanics with gravity. I will suggest that these problems are related, and that a promising…continue reading →

Warsaw Spacetime Colloquium: Summer semester program

  • Posted on 25 January 2021
  • /Under News
The Philosophy of Physics Group is happy to announce the program of the Warsaw Spacetime Colloquium for the upcoming term: 26 February (17:00-19:00 CET) - Sean Carroll (Caltech) - "From Quantum Mechanics to Spacetime" 12 March (17:00-19:00 CET) - Daniele Oriti (LMU Munich) - TBA 26 March (17:00-19:00 CET) - Sabine Hossenfelder (Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies) - "Superdeterminism" 09 April (17:00-19:00 CEST) - Erik Curiel (LMU Munich, Harvard University) - "The Dynamics of Classical Physics Determines the Structure of Newtonian Spacetime; That of Quantum Physics Does Not" 23 April (17:00-19:00 CEST) -…continue reading →

Warsaw Spacetime Colloquium: Vera Matarese (22 January on Zoom)

  • Posted on 18 January 2021
  • /Under News
On Friday, 22 January, Vera Matarese (University of Bern) will give a talk entitled “Spacetime the many substances” (abstract below). The meeting will take place online on Zoom (16:00-18:00 CET). If you have not registered yet, you can do so by sending a message to antonio.vassallo@pw.edu.pl. The recordings of the previous meetings are available on the ICFO’s YouTube channel. Abstract: The view that loop quantum gravity’s spin-networks represent concrete atoms of space is proposed in Vassallo & Esfeld (2014), which adopts a primitive ontology approach to spacetime. Rovelli (2015), on the contrary, warns…continue reading →

Warsaw Spacetime Colloquium: Karim Thébault (8 January on Zoom)

  • Posted on 4 January 2021
  • /Under News
On Friday, 8 January, Karim Thébault (University of Bristol) will give a talk entitled “Poincaré, dark energy, and the deadly robots of Krikkit: Solving the problem of time via superpositions of the cosmological constant” (abstract below). The meeting will take place online on Zoom (16:00-18:00 CET). If you have not registered yet, you can do so by sending a message to antonio.vassallo@pw.edu.pl. The program for the winter semester can be found here, while the recordings of the previous meetings are available on the ICFO’s YouTube channel. Abstract: Henri Poincaré, in a strangely neglected…continue reading →

International Center for Formal Ontology (ICFO)

  • Posted on 2 January 2021
  • /Under Workshop
The International Center for Formal Ontology (ICFO) is a centre of research excellence devoted to the formal ontology. ICFO was created in February 2015 and is affiliated at Warsaw University of Technology, Faculty of Administration and Social Sciences, Poland. For more general information about the Center visit our Aims, Program Council, Members, Publications, Research collaborators  and Research Groups. continue reading →

Warsaw Spacetime Colloquium: Claus Kiefer (27 November on Zoom)

  • Posted on 23 November 2020
  • /Under Workshop
On Friday, 27 November, Claus Kiefer (University of Cologne) will give a talk entitled “Time in quantum gravity” (abstract below). The meeting will take place online on Zoom (16:00-18:00 CET). If you have not registered yet, you can do so by sending a message to antonio.vassallo@pw.edu.pl. The program for the winter semester can be found here, while the recordings of the previous meetings are available on the ICFO's YouTube channel. Abstract: Time is absolute in standard quantum theory and dynamical in general relativity. The combination of the two theories into a theory of…continue reading →

Warsaw Spacetime Colloquium: James Read (30 October on Zoom)

  • Posted on 28 October 2020
  • /Under News
On Friday, 30 October, James Read (University of Oxford) will give a talk entitled “Shifts and reference” (abstract below). The meeting will take place online on Zoom (16:00-18:00 CET). If you have not registered yet, you can do so by sending a message to antonio.vassallo@pw.edu.pl. The program for the winter semester can be found here, while the recordings of the previous meetings are available on the ICFO's YouTube channel. Abstract: Maudlin’s ‘metric essentialist’ response to the hole argument of general relativity is well-known, but differs strikingly from his response to what is often…continue reading →

Warsaw Spacetime Colloquium: J. Brian Pitts (16 October on Zoom)

  • Posted on 12 October 2020
  • /Under News
On Friday, 16 October, J. Brian Pitts (University of Lincoln, University of Cambridge, University of South Carolina) will give a talk entitled “Change in observables in Hamiltonian general relativity” (abstract below). The meeting will take place online on Zoom (16:00-18:00 CET). If you have not registered yet, you can do so by sending a message to antonio.vassallo@pw.edu.pl. The program for the winter semester can be found here, while the recordings of the previous meetings are available on the ICFO's YouTube channel. Abstract: Since the 1950s it has been claimed that change is missing…continue reading →

New publication in Review of Philosophy and Psychology

  • Posted on 11 October 2020
  • /Under Workshop
The paper entitled “Situated Counting“, written by Peter Gärdenfors & Paula Quinon, has been published in Review of Philosophy and Psychology (open access). We encourage everyone interested to read it: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13164-020-00508-3. Below is an abstract: "We present a model of how counting is learned based on the ability to perform a series of specific steps. The steps require conceptual knowledge of three components: numerosity as a property of collections; numerals; and one-to-one mappings between numerals and collections. We argue that establishing one-to-one mappings is the central feature of counting. In the literature, the…continue reading →

Warsaw Spacetime Colloquium: Carlo Rovelli (2 October on Zoom)

  • Posted on 28 September 2020
  • /Under Workshop
On Friday, 2 October, Carlo Rovelli (Aix-Marseille University) will give a talk entitled "Why can we decide what we shall do tomorrow, but we cannot decide what we did yesterday? Time reversibility and the physics of an agent" (abstract below). The meeting will take place online on Zoom (16:00-18:00 CET). If you have not registered yet, you can do so by sending a message to antonio.vassallo@pw.edu.pl. The program for the winter semester can be found here. Abstract: Much of the confusion in the philosophy of spacetime stems from the failure to recognize that 'space'…continue reading →