Philosophy and History of Physics Reading Group

This reading group meets on Tuesdays, 4.30pm to 6pm in the Board Room. Organised by Jeremy Butterfield, Matt Farr and Bryan Roberts.

Lent Term 2020

Our theme this term is: spacetime.

21 January

We will discuss David Malament, 'Causal theories of time and the conventionality of simultaneity', Nous 1977.

28 January

We will discuss (i) a philosophical introduction to representation theorems for geometry and spacetime, and then (ii) a paper by Bryan Roberts which generalizes Malament's 1977 theorem.

4 February

We will have presentations by Grace Field (on black holes) and James Wills (on singularities in general relativity). For a copy of the corresponding papers, please contact Jeremy Butterfield (jb56).

11 February

We will discuss Gryb, Palacios and Thébault, 'On the Universality of Hawking Radiation'.

18 February

We will discuss Unruh's 1995 paper on sonic analogues of black holes. Discussion will be led by Bryan Roberts, who will kindly provide notes.