Philosophy of Physics Seminar
The Philosophy of Physics Seminar is a seminar series devoted to the philosophical and conceptual study of the major physical theories: statistical mechanics, quantum mechanics and quantum field theory, and theories of space-time, gravity, and cosmology. It is also concerned with the nature of symmetries and symmetry breaking, probability theory, and historically important theories, such as Newtonian gravity.
You can watch previous seminars on our YouTube channel and also visit the Philosophy of Physics Group website for more information.
Philosophy of Physics Seminar convenor: Sam Fletcher
Michaelmas Term 2025 - Term Card
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Week 1 (1st May) | William Wolf (Oxford) | Permanent Underdetermination in Modern Cosmology |
Week 2 (8th May) | Jer Steeger (Bristol) | Complementarity as infringement |
Week 4 (22nd May) | Simon Saunders (Oxford) | Principle and constructive theories of physical probability and Bell inequalities |
Week 6 (5th Jun) | George Webster (Oxford) | "It from bit" as a critical idealist proposal |
Week 7 (12th Jun) | JB Manchak (UC Irvine) | Spacetime Asymmetry |
Week 8 (19th Jun) | Klaas Landsman (Radboud University) | Philosophy of Mathematical Physics from A to B |
Week 1 (23rd Jan) | CANCELLED | CANCELLED |
Week 2 (30th Jan) | Pablo Acuna (Pontifical Catholic University of Chile) | Hidden Variables: Contextuality and Parameter (In)dependence |
Week 4 (13th Feb) | Rob Iliffe (Oxford) | Exact conclusions from the approximative reasoning: George Smith's Principia Mathematica |
Week 5 (20th Feb) | Sarwar Ahmed (Wuppertal) | Inference to the Source: The Case of Observing a Binary Black Hole Merger |
Week 6 (27th Feb) | Quentin Vigneron (Nicolaus Copernicus University, Torun) | Modifying general relativity on the basis of topological considerations from the Newtonian limit |
Week 7 (6th March) | Dominik Ehrenfels (Oxford) | Reviving Reduction |
Week 8 (13th March) | Clara Bradley (UCL) | Are Sophistication and Reduction Always Viable Alternatives? |
Week 1 (17th Oct) | David Wallace (University of Pittsburgh) | The local quantum vacuum as the past Hypothesis |
Week 2 (24th Oct) | Peter Morgan (Yale) | A Dataset & Signal Analysis Interpretation of Quantum Field Theory |
Week 3 (31st Oct) | Philosophy of Physics Seminar | Philosophy of Physics Seminar |
Week 4 (7th Nov) | Paul Hoyningen-Huene (University of Hannover) | How do robust abstract economic models explain? |
Week 6 (21st Nov) | Lucy Mason (Royal Holloway University of London) | Measurement, Metrology, and Perspectives on the Quantum State |
Week 8 (5th Dec) | Richard Healey (University of Arizona) | How to be a single-world quantum relativist |
Week 1 (25th Apr) | Simon Saunders (Oxford) | Finite frequentism explains quantum probability |
Week 2 (2nd May) | Natasha Oughton (National Quantum Computing Centre) | Why quantum theory? Understanding and explanation through reconstruction |
Week 4 (16th May) | Jingyi Wu (LSE) | Between a Stone and a Hausdorff space |
Week 5 (23rd May) | Daniel Grimmer (Oxford) | In Search of New Spacetimes: The ISE Method of Topological Redescription |
Week 6 (30th May) | Daniel Grimmer (Oxford) | In Search of New Spacetimes: Topological Redescription via the ISE Method |
Week 8 (13th June) | Giovanni Valente (Milan) | CANCELLED: On the Quantum Boltzmann Equation: What is the source, if any, of irreversibility? |
Week 2 (25th Jan) | Caspar Jacobs (Leiden) | Stating Maths-First Realism, or: How to Say Things with Models |
Week 4 (8th Feb) | Adam Caulton (Oxford) | Reduction and Equivalence: Some mild suggestions |
Week 6 (22nd Feb) | Nick Ormrod (Oxford, Computer Science) | Quantum Influences and Event Relativity |
Week 8 (7th March) | James Read (Oxford) | The Non-Relativistic Geometric Trinity of Gravity |
Week 1 (12th Oct) | David Wallace (Pittsburgh) | Thermodynamics with and without reversibility |
Week 2 (19th Oct) | Nicholas Teh (Notre Dame) | Understanding the Geroch - Jang argument |
Week 3 (26th Oct) | Sabine Hossenfelder (Munich Centre for Mathematical Philosophy) | Superdeterminism - The Forgotten Solution |
Week 5 (9th Nov) | Tim Palmer (Oxford) & Chris Timpson (Oxford) | Superdeterminism and Non-Conspiracy Revisited: A Debate |
Week 6 (16th Nov) | Jonathan Halliwell (Imperial) | Aspects of Leggett-Garg Test for Macrorealism |
Week 8 (30th Nov) | Bryan Roberts (LSE) | How black holes are really hot |
Week 1 (27th April) | Sebastian de Haro (Amsterdam) | Dualities and quasi-dualities: on solitons and phases of quantum field theories |
Week 2 (4th May) | Johannes Frankhauser (Oxford/Innsbruck) | Quantum Uncertainty and Empirical Completeness |
Week 3 (11th May) | Renate Loll (Radbound University, Nijmegen) | Questions on Quantum Gravity |
Week 4 (18th May) | Paul Skokowski (Stanford) | Superstitions and beliefs about superpositions |
Week 5 (25th May) | Fedele Lizzi (Naples) | Quantum Observers for Quantum Spacetime |
Week 6 (1st Jun) | Doreen Fraser (Waterloo) | Philosophical implications of measurement in QFT |
Week 7 (8th Jun) | Dennis Lehmkuhl (Bonn) | Einstein's Six Paths to the Metric Tensor - and why he interpreted it differently than you do |
Week 8 (15th Jun) | Justin Holder | Poincare's Radical Ontology |
Week 2 (26th Jan) | Kobi Kremnitzer (Oxford) | Scientific theories of consciousness, the closure of the (current) physical, and quantum collapse |
Week 4 (9th Feb) | James Read (Oxford) | An invitation to constructive axiomatics |
Week 5 (16th Feb) | Marco Giovanelli (Philosophy Turin) | Special Relativity as a Theory of Principles. On Einstein' Distinction between Constructive and Principle Theories |
Week 6 (23rd Feb) | Yemima Ben-Menahem (Hebrew University, Jerusalem) | Lawlessness |
Week 7 (2nd March) | Marina Cortes (Institute for Astrophysics and Space Sciences, Lisbon) | Biocosmology: towards the birth of a new physics field |
Week 8 (9th March) | Niels Linnemann (University of Geneva) | General relativity as a classical spin-2 theory? |
Week 1 (13th October) | Caspar Jacobs (Oxford) | The Model is Not the Territory: On Quality and Isomorphism |
Week 2 (20th Oct) | Lu Chen (Koc University) | A discrete case for dynamicism |
Week 3 (27th Oct) | Christian Wuthrich (University of Geneva) | Laws Beyond Spacetime |
Week 5 (10th Nov) | Ted Jacobson (University of Maryland & Cambridge) | Diffeomorphism invariance and the black hole information paradox |
Week 6 (17th Nov) | Patrick M. Duerr (Hebrew University, Jerusalem & Oxford) | Conventionalism - a Sophisticated Philosophy for our (Space)Times |
Week 7 (24th November) | Henrique Gomes (Oxford) | The Hole Argument: A Drama in Five Acts |
Week 1 (28th April) | Ard Louis (Oxford) | An algorthmic version of Occam's razor in machine learning and biological evolution |
Week 2 (5th May) | Julian Barbour (Oxford) | Complexity as a Time |
Week 3 (12th May) | Tomasz Bigaj (Warsaw) | Entanglement and discernibility of identical particles |
Week 4 (19th May) | Jim Al Khalili (Surrey) | Life on the Edge: the dawn of quantum biology |
Week 5 (26th May) | Nick Huggett (Illinois) | Quantum gravity in a laboratory |
Week 6 (2nd Jun) | Jonathan Halliwell (Imperial) | Leggerr-Gard tests for macrorealism - generalised inequalities, tests for continous variables, non-invasive protocols |
Week 7 (9th Jun) | Fay Dowker (Imperial) | Recovering General Relativity from a Planck scale discrete theory of quantum gravity |
Week 8 (16th Jun) | Oliver Pooley (Oxford) | Models of the open future and relativistic physics |
Week 1 (20th Jan) | Tushar Menon (Cambridge) | Dynamical substantivalism |
Week 2 (27th Jan) | Claudio Calosi (Geneva) | Wavefunction Monism |
Week 3 (3rd Feb) | Valeriya Chasova (Salzburg/Strasbourg/Louvain-la-Neuve) | Local symmetries have direct empirical status |
Week 4 (10th Feb) | Samuel Fletcher (Minnesota) | Relativistic Spacetime: Dependence and Ontology |
Week 5 (17th Feb) | James Read (Oxford) | Curvature coupling, electromagnetic wave propagation, and the consistency of the geometrical optics limit |
Week 8 (10th March) | Katherine Brading (Duke) | Du Chatelet. Euler, d'Alembert: constructive and principle approaches to philosophical mechanics |
Week 1 (14th Oct) | Sebastian Murgueitio-Ramirez (Oxford) | On Symmetries, Models and Representation |
Week 2 (21st Oct) | Kasia Rejzner (York) | Symmetries, anomalies and quantum Noether theorem |
Week 4 (4th Nov) | David Wallace (Pittsburgh) | The sky is blue, and other reasons physics needs the Everett interpretation |
Week 5 (11th Nov) | Milena Ivanova (Cambridge) | What is a Beautiful Experiment? |
Week 6 (18th Nov) | Tomoko Kitagawa (Oxford) | Moscow, Oxford, or Princeton: Emmy Noether's Move from Gottingen (1933) |
Week 7 (25th Nov) | Emily Qureshi-Hurst (Oxford) | The Many Worries of Many Worlds: Exploring Some Possible Implications of Everettian Quantum Mechanics |
Week 8 (2nd December) | Neil Dewar (Cambridge) | Symmetries, Quiddities, and Higher-Order Structure |
Week 9 (9th Dec) | Katie Robertson (Birmingham) | On the status of thermodynamics: the village witch's Trial |