Introducing the Möbius Seminars: seminars by philosophers to physicists

Philosophers of physics study the foundational, metaphysical and epistemological aspects of this natural science. Physicists carry their research with the hope of explaining the process occurring in the Universe, decipher its fundamental laws and extract information from experiments and observations. Those respective activities voice for a place enabling the two communities to meet. The Möbius Seminars are a cycle of seminars on philosophy of physics, given by philosophers to physicists. They aim at making the scientific community aware of the investigations and developments occurring in the field of philosophy, and to foster exchange between the two fields. The seminars occur once a month during one hour, with a half devoted to the presentation and the other half to the discussion. They are occurring online via zoom, and any interested party is welcome to join. We are starting a new cycle for the year 2021/22, more information can be found on our website, our Twitter and our Youtube channel (arriving soon). 

Lettres épistémologiques now available in digital archive

Thanks to Don Howard and Sebastián Murgueitio Ramírez at the University of Notre Dame, the long-lost complete issues of Lettres épistémologiques (Epistemological Letters), a small journal dedicated to the foundations of physics and published out of Switzerland from 1973 to 1984, have now been made available online. Here is the message from Don Howard:

Bonn: New Group for History and Philosophy of Physics

Dennis Lehmkuhl has accepted a faculty position at the University of Bonn, where a new group for history and philosophy of physics will be created. For details of the planned research projects, and soon for announcements of postdoctoral, doctoral and visiting fellowships, see the website of the new group, https://www.history-and-philosophy-of-physics.com.

UPDATE 5 November 2018:
The Lichtenberg Group led by Dennis Lehmkuhl is part of the larger local group in the philosophy and history of physics at the University of Bonn. For more information on the entire group and its activities, please visit https://www.philphys.uni-bonn.de/.

Black Hole Initiative conference videos

All of the BHI Second Annual Conference talks are now uploaded on the
BHI channel on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeKr4Y4flol0SDcV3qNxj_w?view_as=subscriber as well as the BHI website (https://bhi.fas.harvard.edu). You will find the Keynote by Ranier Weiss as well as the popular session, moderated by Ramesh Narayan, “How will we prove Black Holes are Real” and the lovely “Remembering Stephen Hawking” by Andy Strominger and Malcom Perry.

New website: SciPost

SciPost is a new website that might be of interest to readers of this blog. It claims to be the “complete scientific publication portal; Managed by professional scientists; For open, global and perpetual access to science”. Thanks to Guido Bacciagaluppi for the pointer.

Einstein Papers Project’s website relaunched

The Einstein Papers Project at Caltech has relaunched its website, which can be found at http://www.einstein.caltech.edu. The plan for the rebooted website is to publish a new article or post concerning the project ‘Einstein’s Collected Papers’ each month on this website. The first one is up, written by Dennis Lehmkuhl and entitled ‘What is the Einstein Papers Project?’.

New wiki: PhD programs with strengths in philosophy of physics

Shawn Miller (UC Davis) has started a new wiki listing PhD programs with strengths in philosophy of physics at philphysics.net. Check it out, and contribute or update as needed!

This is already an excellent resource for prospective graduate students, but also for people already in the field. A big thank you for this to Shawn!

Launch of Ergo

The first issue of Ergo, the new open-access journal in philosophy, is now published at http://www.ergophiljournal.org/

It will include four papers plus an editorial with the data about submissions and turnaround times. At the same time four blog posts will appear, one on each of the four papers in the first issue.

Animated Gödel spacetime

Courtesy of Erik Curiel (thanks Erik!), who sent me this cool animation at the New Scientist of what it could visually look like to live in a Gödel spacetime:

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/nstv/2013/01/first-time-travel-movies-reveal-surreal-universe.html

Enjoy!

Online resources: database of open course ware in physics

Here are a couple of links to collections of free open online courses in physics. The first catalogues a database of open course ware collection from the world’s leading universities. This database provides the public insight to all the free high quality college level courses across a vast amount of programs, especially those in the physics. The site is noncommercial and available for anyone, there are no involved costs, and will be updated yearly. Here it is:

http://www.OnlineCourses.com/Physics/

Recently, the City College of New York a cited this resource on their page http://www.ccny.cuny.edu/physics/helplink.cfm on their Physic Academic Programs page. There, you will also find links to other online courses and educational material freely available online.