[PhilPhys] Lent Term Sigma Club Meetings at LSE

[R.P.Frigg at lse.ac.uk]

Sigma Club Meetings 

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Monday 19 January, 5:15-7:00 pm

Fay Dowker

Imperial College, London

Dynamical Logic

Major advances in science are made when it is discovered that a particular aspect of the universe that had previously been thought ofas part of an immutable background is, in fact, not fixed but is governed by detailed dynamical law. One thinks immediately of the discovery of Evolution by Natural Selection. Another example is General Relativity which showed us that geometry is part of physics. What of Quantum Mechanics? If it is not obvious what 'background' one must give up in Quantum Mechanics, I suggest the reason is that we have not understood the theory fully yet and that, in turn, is becaus the spacetime nature of reality has not yet fully been taken to heart in addressing its interpretation. Partial progress was made by Dirac and Feynman by casting the dynamical content of quantum theory in terms of a Sum Over (spacetime) Histories (SOH). Recently it has been proposed by Sorkin that this SO is part of an interpretive framework in which the rules of inference that are used to reason about physical reality are subject to dynamical law. If this interpretation is successful then Quantum Mechanics is telling us that logic itself is part of science.


Monday 9 February, Joseph Berkovitz, University of Toronto

Monday 9 March, Dan Parker, Virginia Tech

Monday 16 March, José Díez, University of Barcelona


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