Philosophy of Physics Seminar (Thursday - Week 2, MT22)
Thursday 20 October, 4:30pm
Lecture Room, Radcliffe Humanities
Lu Chen(Koç University): 'A discrete case for dynamicism'
Dynamicism is the view that dynamical laws are more fundamental that spacetime geometry, with the opposite view called geometricism. I argue in favor of dynamicism through the case of discrete spacetime. I show that, surprisingly, only dynamicism naturally allows the possibility that approximately Euclidean geometry emerges from a discrete space lattice, which is an important advantage for the view. I demonstrate this claim through two rigorous toy examples: the simple physics of a random walk and discrete quantum mechanics.
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