Philosophy of Physics Seminar

The Philosophy of Physics Seminar is a seminar series devoted to the philosophical and conceptual study of the major physical theories: statistical mechanics, quantum mechanics and quantum field theory, and theories of space-time, gravity, and cosmology. It is also concerned with the nature of symmetries and symmetry breaking, probability theory, and historically important theories, such as Newtonian gravity.

Seminars ordinarily take place on Thursdays 16.30 - 18.30 in the Lecture Room at the Radcliffe Humanities Building, Woodstock Rd. 

Philosophy of Physics Seminar Convenors: Tushar Vasudev Menon and Carina Prunkl

Philosophy of Physics Group Website

Past Terms

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Week 1 (17th January)

 Laurenz Hudetz (LSE)

'The conceptual-schemas account of interpretation'
Week 2 (24th January) Patrick Dürr (Oxford) 'Philosophy of the Dead: Nordström Gravity'
Week 3 (31st January) Yang-Hui He (City, London) 'Exceptional and Sporadic'
Week 4 (7th February)  Casey McCoy (Stockholm) 'Why is h-bar a universal constant?' 
Week 5 (14th February)  Joanna Luc (Cambridge) 'Generalised manifolds as basic objects of General Relativity'

Week 6 (21st February)

 Katie Robertson (Birmingham)

'Reducing the second law of thermodynamics: the demons and difficulties'
Week 7 (28th February) Alex Franklin (KCL) 'On the Effectiveness of Effective Field Theories'

Week 8 (7th March)

 Karen Crowther (Geneva) 'As Below, So Before: Synchronic and Diachronic Conceptions of Emergence in Quantum Gravity'

Week 1 (11th October)  

David Wallace (USC)

 'Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking in Finite Quantum Systems: a decoherent-histories approach'
Week 2 (18th October)  Simon Saunders (Oxford)  
Week 3 No seminar  
Week 4  No seminar  
Week 5 (8th November) Tushar Menon (Oxford) 'Rotating spacetimes and the relativistic null hypothesis'
Week 6 (15th November) Jonathan Barrett (Oxford) 'Quantum causal models'
Week 7 (22nd November) James Nguyen (IoP/ UCL) 'Interpreting Models: A Suggestion and its Payoffs'
Week 8  No seminar  

Week 1 (26th April) Doreen Fraser (Waterloo)  "Renormalization and scaling transformations in quantum field theory"
Week 2 (3rd May) Jeremy Butterfield (Cambridge) "On Dualities and Equivalences Between Physical Theories"
Week 3 (10th May)  Matt Farr (Cambridge) "The C Theory of Time"
Week 4 (17th May) Seth Lloyd (MIT) "The Future of Quantum Computing"

Week 5 (24th May)

 Emily Thompson (Durham)

"John Locke: Newtonian Absolutist about Time"
Week 6 (31st May) Minhyong Kim "Three Dualities"

Week 7 (7th June)

 Owen Maroney (Notre Dame) 

"What's Fine for Leggett and Garg? About Measurements and Macrorealisms"