[PhilPhys] Workshop in Tilburg

[gvalente at umd.edu]

Dear all, 

Please see below the announcement for a workshop on “Causality and Locality in Physics”, taking place in Tilburg on June 13. 

Respectfully, 

Giovanni Valente 
University of Maryland and Tilburg Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science


Subject: Workshop: Causality and Locality in Physics (Tilburg, 13 June 2008)

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One-day workshop
CAUSALITY AND LOCALITY IN PHYSICS

Tilburg Center for Logic and Philosophy of Science
13 June 2008

http://www.tilburguniversity.nl/tilps/causality2008/

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What sort of correlations between separated physical systems are allowed in Nature? And when are such correlations genuine causal influences? These questions have raised deep puzzles in the foundations of physics. In fact, different successful theories embody radically different answers, often in the form of underlying principles. A tension concerning the principle of locality emerges already in the classical picture: in Newtonian mechanics forces can 
act at a distance between material bodies, whereas in 
electromagnetism effects propagate from points to neighboring points by means of fields. Quantum mechanics, then, exhibits a quite peculiar form of non-locality, that has puzzled physicists and philosophers of physics since the earlier formulations of the theory. Particles sharing an entangled state are so deeply intertwined that measurement events on one of them seem to instantaneously affect the 
others, no matter how far away from each other they are located. The picture gets even more complicated if one considers Einstein's principle of causality as a relativistic constraint. The interpretation of quantum field theory, which unifies quantum mechanics and special relativity, thus heavily depends on how one answers the above questions. This workshop surveys the physical 
notions of causality and locality and their mutual relation, as they emerge in ordinary quantum mechanics as well as in classical and quantum field theories.

The participants are Guido Bacciagaluppi (Sydney), Angelo Cei (Leeds), Mathias Frisch (Maryland), F.A. Muller (Utrecht), Miklos Redei (London), and Michael Seevinck (Utrecht). Richard Healey (Arizona) will give the keynote address. The workshop is organized by Giovanni Valente (Maryland/Tilburg).

There is no registration fee. However, interested participants are kindly asked to send a registration email to Giovanni Valente (gvalente at umd.edu) by June 1.