physics
TagFirst Issue of Philosophy of Physics Published
The inaugural issue of the journal Philosophy of Physics (PoP) has been published. (more…)
Chen Wins 2021 Popper Prize
Eddy Keming Chen, assistant professor of philosophy at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), is the winner of the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science‘s 2021 Popper Prize. (more…)
Carroll from Caltech to Johns Hopkins
Sean Carroll, currently research professor of physics at Caltech, will be moving to Johns Hopkins University, where he will hold appointments in the university’s Department of Physics and Astronomy and its Department of Philosophy. (more…)
Philosophers Assemble Archive of Obscure but Prescient 1970s Physics Newsletter
Before you throw out all of those old boxes of journals you received in the mail or articles you photocopied in an attempt to declutter your office, because you think, “ahh, it’s all online anyway,” take a moment to read this. (more…)
Philosophers Receive $600K for “Cosmology Beyond Spacetime”
Philosophers Nick Huggett (University of Illinois at Chicago) and Christian Wüthrich (Geneva) have won a $600,000 grant to support their “Cosmology Beyond Spacetime” project. (more…)
Inaugural Winner of New Philosophy of Physics Prize Announced
Duke University and Studies in History and Philosophy of Science have collaborated to create a new prize in philosophy of physics. Named the “Du Châtelet Prize in Philosophy of Physics,” it “recognizes a U.S. or international graduate student or a recent Ph.D. for their previously unpublished work in philosophy of physics.”
Philosophers On a Physics Experiment that “Suggests There’s No Such Thing As Objective Reality”
Earlier this month, MIT Technology Review published an article entitled “A quantum experiment suggests there’s no such thing as objective reality.” It was one of several publications to excitedly report on a recent experiment conducted by Massimiliano Proietti (Heriot-Watt University) and others. (more…)
Philosophy and Science Student Wins $10,000 Essay Prize
The Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi) has awarded a number of prizes in response to its call for essays answering the question, “What is fundamental?”, and the top prize has gone to Emily Adlam, who studied physics and philosophy at Oxford and is now a PhD student in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Cambridge. (more…)
$1.37 Million Grant for Philosophy of Cosmology
Christopher Smeenk, associate professor of philosophy at Western University, and James Weatherall, professor of logic and philosophy of science at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), have been awarded a $1.37 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation for their project, “New Directions in Philosophy of Cosmology.”
A Scientist On Philosophy, The “Thankless Job” That Succeeds Through Superfluousness
egardless of whom you want to assign the task of reaching across the line , presently little crosses it. Few practicing physicists today care what philosophers do or think.
And as someone who has tried to write about topics on the intersection of both fields, I can report that this disciplinary segregation is meanwhile institutionalized: The physics journals won’..
Artistic Impressions of Academic Talks
The art of the academic talk takes on a different meaning when looking at the drawings and paintings of Kaća Bradonjić. Dr. Bradonjić is wrapping up a visiting appointment in physics at Wellesley College and will soon be beginning one at Hampshire College. Her research is informed by philosophy and the history of science (she was a double major in physics and philos..
Philosophers, Physicists, Others Win €2.5m to Study the Large Hadron Collider
An interdisciplinary team consisting of academics working in philosophy, physics, history, and sociology have won a 2.5 million euro grant to fund a three year project about the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator. It first started up on 10 September 2008, and remains the lat..
How Philosophers Can Help Cosmologists
Cosmology’s hot streak has stalled. Cosmologists have looked deep into time, almost all the way back to the Big Bang itself, but they don’t know what came before it. They don’t know whether the Big Bang was the beginning, or merely one of many beginnings. Something entirely unimaginable might have preceded it. Cosmologists don’t know if the world we see around us is..
Defending Philosophy Against the Physicists
In 2012, physicists Lawrence Krauss claimed that “…science progresses and philosophy doesn’t”, and Neil deGrasse Tyson infamously echoes such opinions… Lots of high profile physicists make dead wrong claims about a subject in which they are not experts, repeating misperceptions even after philosophers keep correcting them. This is like listening to creationists re..