From: David Wallace < This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. >
Date: 13 January 2011 20:42:48 GMT+08:00
To: " This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. " < This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. >
Subject: Philosophy of Physics seminars this term

Dear All,

 

The Philosophy of Physics seminar will, as usual, meet this term on Thursdays at 4.30pm in the Lecture Room at 10 Merton St, every week except 1^st week. The schedule is as follows:

 

Week 1: no seminar

 

Week 2: Roman Frigg (LSE): “Explaining Thermodynamic-Like Behaviour In Terms of Epsilon-Ergodicity”

 

Abstract: Macroscopic systems such as gases reach equilibrium when left to themselves. Why do they behave in this way? The canonical answer to this question, originally proffered by Boltzmann, is that the systems have to be ergodic. This answer has been criticised on different grounds and is now widely regarded as flawed. In this paper we argue that some of the main arguments against Boltzmann’s answer, in particular, arguments based on the KAM-theorem and the Markus-Meyer theorem, are beside the point or inconclusive. We then argue that something close to Boltzmann’s original proposal is true: systems approach equilibrium if they are epsilon-ergodic, i.e. ergodic on the entire accessible phase space except for a small region of measure epsilon. This answer is promising because there are good reasons to believe that relevant systems in statistical mechanics are epsilon-ergodic.

 

Week 3: Carl Hoefer (Barcelona): TBC

 

Week 4: David Wallace (Oxford): “Symmetry, locality, and space”

 

Abstract: I attempt to square the circle between (a) the view that two situations, related by a symmetry, are the same situation differently described (so that symmetry can seem like an inessential consequence of our choosing an excessive mathematical formalism), and (b) the manifest fact that symmetries - local and global - seem to play an absolutely essential role in physical theories (so that they seem like features of the theory itself, not just of our formulation of it). In doing so, I hope to cast some light on the relationship between symmetries and the spaces of which they are symmetries, and also on the gauge principle.

 

Week 5: Jon Barrett (Royal Holloway): TBC

 

Week 6: Steven French (Leeds):  “Doing Away with Dispositions: Towards a Law-Based View of Modality”

 

Abstract: Most metaphysicians accept a form of possibility in actuality, articulated through dispositional accounts of properties. Advocates of the dispositional essentialist variant of such accounts have drawn on modern physics in support of their programme. However I shall suggest that such support is equivocal at best and that the recent development of this programme has led to the denial of an appropriate role for laws and symmetries in physics. As an alternative I shall defend the view that laws and symmetries themselves should be regarded as part of the 'fundamental base' of reality, drawing on recent work in metaphysics. This raises a number of issues to do with the relationship between laws and properties, the modal nature of laws and the relationship between determinable and determinate aspects of the fundamental base, which I hope to explore.

 

Week 7: Eleanor Knox (Institute of Philosophy, University of London): TBC

 

Week 8: Chris Wuthrich (San Diego): TBC

 

 

As usual, all are welcome. There will normally be an opportunity to dine with the speaker after the seminar.

 

 

 

Best wishes,

 

Harvey Brown and David Wallace