We meet fortnightly on Mondays at 10am in the Board Room.
Organised by Hasok Chang, Neil Dewar and Richard Staley.
Lent Term 2026
This term we discuss recent work or research in progress with different members of the reading group and community of historians and philosophers of physics in Cambridge, generally pairing current work with one other article or source.
All are welcome!
Given our discussion of unpublished work, please see below to sign up to participate and receive those papers not accessible through the Cambridge University Library. Papers will be distributed one week before the first meeting and two weeks before each subsequent meeting.
2 February
In this meeting we consider a recent manuscript on conventionalism from Neil Dewar.
- Neil Dewar, 'Making Space: The Semantics of Geometrical Conventionalism', unpublished ms. (2026).
- Patrick Dürr and James Read, 'An invitation to conventionalism: A philosophy for modern (space-)times', Synthese 204, no. 1 (2024), 1; please read §§1–4.
16 February
In this meeting we consider Jaco de Swart's current work on neutrinos, particle dark matter, and cleaning a dark matter accelerator.
- Jaco de Swart, 'Before the WIMP: neutrinos and the rise of particle dark matter', unpublished ms. under review at Nature Review Physics (2026).
- Jaco de Swart and Annemarie Mol, 'Cleaning a Dark Matter Detector: A Case of Ontological and Normative Elusiveness', Social Studies of Science 0, no. 0 (2025), 03063127251361158.
2 March
In this meeting we consider a chapter and article manuscript from Fiona Amery and Katy Duncan on the blurriness and uncertainties in atmospheric physics of the late nineteenth century – and also the blurry disciplinary boundary between physics and meteorology.
- Fiona Amery, '"Calling forth an aurora": Atmospheric analogues and mimetic experimentation', unpublished ms. (2026).
- Katy Duncan, '"The most difficult thing imaginable": William Thomson and the fair weather electricity problem', unpublished ms. (2026).
16 March
In this meeting we consider Daisuke Konagaya's recently published work on Yukawa Hideki's early work and the philosophical interests shaping his research.
- Daisuke Konagaya, 'Yukawa, Tanabe, and Zhuangzi: Yukawa and East Asian Thought in His Theoretical Physics', in Rossella Lupacchini, ed. Tetsugaku Companion to Modern Physics and Kyoto School Philosophy (Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland, 2026), 33–52.
- Rossella Lupacchini, 'Introduction', in Rossella Lupacchini, ed. Tetsugaku Companion to Modern Physics and Kyoto School Philosophy (Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland, 2026), 1–18.
HPP Reading Group sign up
Please fill in the following form to join the email list through which we will distribute those manuscripts not accessible through the CUL. These will be sent to those who have signed up one week before the event (for the first meeting) and two weeks before the event (for subsequent meetings). To sign up for the HPP Reading Group follow this link:
If you have not been able to sign up beforehand and need to gain access to these papers after those dates, contact Richard Staley (raws1@cam.ac.uk) or Neil Dewar (nad42@cam.ac.uk).