News

The Philosophy of Physics Group is happy to announce the program of the Warsaw Spacetime Colloquium for the upcoming term: 25 February (17:00-19:00 CET) – John Norton (University of Pittsburgh) – "Eternal Inflation: When Probabilities Fail." 11 March (17:00-19:00 CET) – Claudio Calosi (University of Geneva) – "Out of All the Indifferences, Into One Thing: Wavefunction Monism." 25 March (17:00-19:00 CET) – Samuel Fletcher (University of Minnesota, Twin Cities) - "What Gravitational Waves Really Teach Us about Energy." 8 April (17:00-19:00 CEST) – Nick Huggett (University of Illinois at Chicago) – "Gravity Meets…continue reading →

On Friday, 21 January, Richard Dawid (Stockholm University) will give a talk titled "Final but Incomplete - What String Theory May Suggest for 21st Century Physics" (abstract below). The meeting will be online on Zoom (17:00-19:00 CET). If you have not registered yet, you can do so here. You can address any inquiry to antonio.vassallo@pw.edu.pl. ABSTRACT String theory has not come close to a complete formulation after half a century of intense research. On the other hand, a number of features of the theory suggest that the theory, once completed, may be a…continue reading →

On Friday, 7 January, Elise Crull (City University of New York) will give a talk titled "You're a Good Man, Harvey Brown: Quantum Rods & Clocks from Decoherence" (abstract below). The meeting will be online on Zoom (17:00-19:00 CET). If you have not registered yet, you can do so here. You can address any inquiry to antonio.vassallo@pw.edu.pl. ABSTRACT Harvey Brown's 2005 book Physical Relativity calls for the development of a constructive-theoretic (as opposed to principle-theoretic) interpretation of relativity: in short, for a quantum-dynamical description of rods and clocks. Significant issues, however, stand in…continue reading →

On Friday, 17 December, Alastair Wilson (University of Birmingham) will give a talk titled "Fundamentality and Levels in Everettian Quantum Mechanics" (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 here. You can address any inquiry to antonio.vassallo@pw.edu.pl. ABSTRACT Distinctions in fundamentality between different levels of description are central to the viability of contemporary decoherence-based Everettian quantum mechanics (EQM). This approach to quantum theory characteristically combines a determinate fundamental reality (one universal wavefunction) with an indeterminate emergent reality (multiple decoherent worlds). In this talk I explore…continue reading →

On Friday, 19 November, Jeremy Butterfield & Henrique Gomes (University of Cambridge) will give a talk titled “Assessing the Hole Argument” (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 here. You can address any inquiry to antonio.vassallo@pw.edu.pl. ABSTRACT We assess the hole argument in general relativity, and the related topics of the definitions of symmetries and determinism. We begin by rejecting the claim made in some recent literature that the sheer mathematics of the theory makes it mandatory to…continue reading →

On Friday, 5 November, Robert DiSalle (Western University) will give a talk titled "On the epistemological foundations of space-time geometry" (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 here. You can address any inquiry to antonio.vassallo@pw.edu.pl. ABSTRACT According to Einstein, what was central to the motivating arguments for the general theory of relativity included not only the familiar arguments about generalizing the relativity of motion, but also the more complicated argument about the empirical content of space-time geometry. On…continue reading →

On Friday, 22 October, Gordon Belot (University of Michigan) will give a talk titled “The Mach-Einstein Principle of 1917-1918” (abstract below). The meeting will take place online on Zoom (17:00-19:00 CEST). If you have not registered yet, you can do so here. You can address any inquiry to antonio.vassallo@pw.edu.pl. ABSTRACT In 1917 and 1918 Einstein was working on relativistic cosmology and on promoting and explaining general relativity in correspondence. During this period, the thesis that the spacetime metric should be determined by the distribution of matter played an important role in his thought.…continue reading →