Physics Interest Group

Meeting time: Friday afternoons (about every other week—see the calendar below), 1:30–3:00 pm Central time 
Meeting place: online via Zoom

The physics interest group (PIG) reads and discusses works of mutual interest in the history and philosophy of physics. We select readings for a variety of reasons: to keep up on the most exciting developments in the field, to help participants scrutinize literature relevant to their research projects (faculty or graduate student research), to provide feedback on works in progress being written by participants (graduate students, faculty, and Center visitors), to revisit classic articles in the literature, and sometimes just to have fun discussing a topic related to physics. For more information please contact Samuel Fletcher (scfletch@umn.edu).

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Spring 2024

This semester PIG will mainly be focusing on works in The Oxford Handbook of the History of Quantum Interpretations. 2022, Olival Freire (ed.) Oxford: Oxford University Press.

January 19: The Oxford Handbook of the History of Quantum Interpretations. 2022. Ch. 21. Copenhagen and Niels Bohr, Anja Skaar Jacobsen

February 2:  The Oxford Handbook of the History of Quantum Interpretations. 2022. Ch. 24. Early Solvay councils: rhetorical lenses for quantum convergence and divergence, José G. Perillán

February 16: Classifying Materials: Ashby Diagrams, Middle-Out Approaches, and the Structure–Property Paradigm Julia Bursten (University of Kentucky) will be presenting.

March 1: No Meeting

March 8: No Meeting - Spring Break

March 29: Ray Pedersen will give a presentation on their current work. Jeff Barrett (UC, Irvine) will be attending

April 5:  The Oxford Handbook of the History of Quantum Interpretations. 2022. Ch. 34. Orthodoxy and heterodoxy in the postwar era, Kristian Camilleri

April 19:  The Oxford Handbook of the History of Quantum Interpretations. 2022. Ch. 35. The reception of the Forman thesis in modernity and postmodernity, Paul Forman

Fall 2023

Please join our mailing list for the zoom invitation or email mcps@umn.edu

This semester PIG will primarily be reading from Peter Lewis's 2016 book Quantum Ontology, supplemented by a few relevant articles. An electronic version of the book is available from the University of Minnesota libraries.

September 15: Lewis, Peter J. 2016. Quantum Ontology: A Guide to the Metaphysics of Quantum Mechanics Oxford:‎ Oxford University Press. Chs. 1 & 2

September 29: Lewis, Peter J. 2016. Quantum Ontology: A Guide to the Metaphysics of Quantum Mechanics Oxford:‎ Oxford University Press. Ch. 3
and
Rovelli, C. 2018. ‘Space is blue and birds fly through it’. Phil.Trans.R.Soc. A 376: 2017.0312. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2017.0312

October 13: Adlam, E., & Rovelli, C. 2022. 'Information is physical: Cross-perspective links in relational quantum mechanics'. arXiv preprint arXiv:2203.13342
and
Lewis, P.J. 2023. 'A dilemma for relational quantum mechanics'. Manuscript.
Peter J. Lewis, Philosophy, Dartmouth College will be visiting

October 27: Lewis, Peter J. 2016. Quantum Ontology: A Guide to the Metaphysics of Quantum Mechanics Oxford:‎ Oxford University Press. Ch. 4

November 17: Lewis, Peter J. 2016. Quantum Ontology: A Guide to the Metaphysics of Quantum Mechanics Oxford:‎ Oxford University Press. Chs. 5 & 6

December 1: Lewis, Peter J. 2016. Quantum Ontology: A Guide to the Metaphysics of Quantum Mechanics Oxford:‎ Oxford University Press. Chs. 7, 8, & 9

Previous PIG topics