New Series on Philosophy of Mathematics and Physics

Series editors: Elaine Landry and Dean Rickles

The editors of a new book series on issues in the philosophy of mathematics and physics are seeking proposals for monographs or edited collections.

Recent years have seen a surge of interest in new topics discussed by philosophers of mathematics and physics, including issues relating to the way in which these disciplines intersect. Titles in this series will cover a range of exciting themes, such as the applicability of mathematics and mathematical modelling; category theory, set theory and logics; computability; climate physics; econophysics; the nature of mathematical proofs; quantum information; quantum gravity; time machines; singularities; and universality.

Junior hiring in philosophy of physics 2013 (moved to front)

As I did last year, I would like to start a post open for comments reporting on junior hiring (i.e., tenure-track and postdoc). While some are still in the making–and I will only report on them if they are official or have been announced elsewhere–, I know of one junior hire in the philosophy of physics so far (broadly conceived):

New colloquium series in the NY/NJ area

Our Southern California group in the philosophy of physics now has an East-coast counterpart in the New York/New Jersey area. The new group has a website, including a calender of upcoming events. Check it out! The NY/NJ colloquium series in the Philosophy of Physics/Science is to be jointly funded by NYU, Rutgers, and Columbia, and will operate on a model much like that of the Southern California group (Porter Williams was an undergraduate at UC Irvine).

Here is a statement of the group’s purpose from its website:

RIP: R I G Hughes (1936-2013)

Richard Ieuan Garth ‘RIG’ Hughes has passed away on Monday, 14 January 2013, who was a professor emeritus at the University of South Carolina, retiring just last year. Among philosophers of physics, he is probably best known as the author of The Structure and Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, from which many of us have learned so much about quantum mechanics. An obituary can be found here.

Postdoctoral Fellowship in Foundations of Physics at the University of Western Ontario

The Rotman Institute of Philosophy invites applications for a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Foundations of Physics. The Fellowship will provide a new scholar in foundations of physics  with a unique opportunity to pursue his or her chosen areas of scholarly research in collaboration with physicists and philosophers.

RIP: J J C ‘Jack’ Smart (1920-2012)

Three days ago, eminent Australian philosopher of science Jack Smart has died. Smart was best known for his defence of realism and his work on time defending a B-theory in the philosophy and metaphysics of science, his physicalism in the philosophy of mind, and his ‘act utilitarianism’ in ethics.

Upcoming talk: “A prolegomenon to a quantum-information-theoretic complement to a general-relativistic implementation of a beyond-Turing computer”

I will give this talk on 10 September at the “First International Conference on Logic and Relativity: honoring István Németi’s 70th birthday” at the Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics in Budapest.

Here is an abstract:

(Urgent) Call for nominations: Hempel Award 2012

The Hempel Award Recognizing Lifetime Scholarly Achievement in the Philosophy of Science

The Governing Board of the Philosophy of Science Association is pleased to announce the Hempel Award, a biennial award recognizing lifetime scholarly achievement in the philosophy of science. The Hempel Award is named in honor of Carl Gustav Hempel (1905-1997), one of the twentieth century’s leading philosophers of science and an active PSA member for over fifty years. At the invitation of the Governing Board, Carl Hempel’s children, Miranda and Peter Hempel, will announce and present the inaugural Hempel Award prior to the PSA Presidential Address at PSA2012 in San Diego, California, November 15-17, 2012.

Sunny outlook for Southern California (updated)

(moving to the front from 22 March 2012)

Things are great for philosophy of physics in Southern California–and promise to be even better next academic year: Jim Weatherall has just accepted an offer from UC Irvine despite attractive offers from elsewhere (see previous post), Oliver Pooley will be visiting UCSD from Oxford for almost the entire academic year, and Iñaki San Pedro will be visiting UCSD from Complutense University in Madrid for the Fall quarter!

ICARUS adds further doubt to superluminal neutrinos claimed by OPERA

Last fall, the OPERA group announced that they had seen superluminal neutrinos. As Sean Carroll explains in his blog today, with the just completed experiment by the ICARUS group (like OPERA at Gran Sasso in Italy, both detecting neutrinos shot their way from CERN near Geneva), which essentially repeats OPERAs experiment, that claim can probably now be put to rest. Together with the systematic errors found last month, we can be fairly certain that neutrinos do not travel faster than the speed of light!

So was all of this a waste of time? No, argues Giovanni Amelino-Camelia in the 8 March issue of Nature.