News

New Publication in Synthese: Does General Relativity Highlight Necessary Connections in Nature?

  • Posted on 19 January 2021
  • /Under ICFO
The paper entitled “Does General Relativity Highlight Necessary Connections in Nature?“, written by Antonio Vassallo, has been published in Synthese (open access). The paper discusses the physical role that the Bianchi identities play in general relativity, and investigates whether these identities—qua part of a physical law—highlight some kind of a posteriori necessity in a Kripkean sense.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 →

Warsaw Spacetime Colloquium: Radin Dardashti (11 December on Zoom)

  • Posted on 7 December 2020
  • /Under News
On Friday, 11 December, Radin Dardashti (University of Wuppertal) will give a talk entitled “The rise and fall of scientific problems” (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: The everyday practice of scientists is to a large extent determined by the scientific problems they are confronted with.…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 →

Einstein Studies Vol. 15 Published

  • Posted on 1 October 2020
  • /Under News
The fifteenth volume of the Einstein studies, entitled "Thinking About Space and Time", has been just published by Birkhäuser (link). The book includes an essay written by Antonio Vassallo and Carl Hoefer (see here for more information).continue reading →

New Member

  • Posted on 10 September 2020
  • /Under News
Pedro Naranjo has just joined the ICFO, where he will work as a research assistant on the project "Self-Subsisting Structures in Quantum Gravity". Pedro is a theoretical physicist interested in the foundations of classical and quantum gravity. Also, he has started his PhD studies in philosophy at the University of Warsaw. Welcome Pedro!continue reading →

Warsaw Spacetime Colloquium 2020-2021 (online)

  • Posted on 9 September 2020
  • /Under News
The Philosophy of Physics Group is happy to announce the Warsaw Spacetime Colloquium 2020-2021. The Colloquium focuses on the foundations of spacetime physics broadly construed, and will be held fortnightly on Zoom (16:00-18:00 CET). The program for the winter semester is available here. People interested in attending the Colloquium can register by sending a message to Antonio Vassallo (antonio.vassallo@pw.edu.pl).continue reading →

New Publication in Foundations of Physics

  • Posted on 15 August 2020
  • /Under News
The paper entitled "How Humean is Bohumianism?", written by Tomasz Bigaj and Antonio Vassallo, has been published in Foundations of Physics (open access). The paper discusses the pros and cons of adopting a Humean strategy towards laws of nature in the context of the quantum theory known as Bohmian mechanics.continue reading →