This blog has been started by Christian Wüthrich, a philosopher of physics and of science at the University of Geneva. I am working on all sorts of foundational issues in physics, particularly spacetime theories and quantum gravity, but also quantum mechanics and other areas of physics. But my work really intersects physics and philosophy, and I have considerable research interest in the metaphysics of science, particularly space, time, determinism, and causation, as well as general issues in the philosophy of science. I also have historical interests, particularly in early modern ideas, as well as 20th century physics.
As of late April 2010, Taking up Spacetime will start to see contributions authored by John Manchak, a philosopher of physics at the University of California, Irvine, and by Chris Smeenk, a philosopher and historian of physics at the University of Western Ontario. Welcome John and Chris to Taking up Spacetime!
Taking up Spacetime 
Dr. Wuthrich,
Hi. I’m a biochemist but as a hobby, I like to think about some of the topics you seem to be interested in. If you’re interested, some of my ideas on the questions of “Why is there something rather than nothing?”, “Why do things exist?”, on infinite sets and on the relationships of all this to mathematics and physics are at:
https://sites.google.com/site/ralphthewebsite/
An abstract of the “Why do things exist and Why is there something rather than nothing?” paper is below.
Thank you in advance for any feedback you may have.
Sincerely,
Roger Granet (roger846@yahoo.com)
Abstract:
In this paper, I propose solutions to the questions “Why do things exist?” and “Why is there something rather than nothing?” In regard to the first question, “Why do things exist?”, it is argued that a thing exists if the contents of, or what is meant by, that thing are completely defined. A complete definition is equivalent to an edge or boundary defining what is contained within and giving “substance” and existence to the thing. In regard to the second question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?”, “nothing”, or non-existence, is first defined to mean: no energy, matter, volume, space, time, thoughts, concepts, mathematical truths, etc.; and no minds to think about this lack-of-all. It is then shown that this non-existence itself, not our mind’s conception of non-existence, is the complete description, or definition, of what is present. That is, no energy, no matter, no volume, no space, no time, no thoughts, etc., in and of itself, describes, defines, or tells you, exactly what is present. Therefore, as a complete definition of what is present, “nothing”, or non-existence, is actually an existent state. So, what has traditionally been thought of as “nothing”, or non-existence, is, when seen from a different perspective, an existent state or “something”. Said yet another way, non-existence can appear as either “nothing” or “something” depending on the perspective of the observer. Another argument is also presented that reaches this same conclusion. Finally, this reasoning is used to form a primitive model of the universe via what I refer to as “philosophical engineering”.
Hello. very interesting blog. were you at the recent ‘Infinities in Cosmology’ meeting in Cambridge? V interesting
Cormac
Hi and thank you. I did not attend the ‘Infinities in Cosmology’ but I would have liked to. I believe that the physics of the “real” world does not have infinities, but the mathematics that model physical processes have lots of them. And each infinity is an opportunity for a physicist to fix a “goof”.
Check out my first essay on infinity busting: This was an entry in the last FQXi essay contest. http://www.fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1403