Haha. Symmetry buddies are really hard to find -- hang in there!

Oxford talk on Spacetime Asymmetry just uploaded...

Among other things, we show that the claim must fail for "Heraclitus" spacetimes -- models that have no local symmetries at all.

It is sometimes claimed that the "privileged coordinates" of geometric model (e.g. a relativistic spacetime) encode its "structure". In a paper just out in Philosophy of Science (open access), Thomas Barrett and I explore the limitations of this idea...

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

New issue out now! Featuring evolutionary transitions and cumulative culture, hole arguments and jury theorems, Galileo’s ship and best laid plans, distinguishing the indistinguishable, and so much more…

Read it here: www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/bjps/202...

#philsci #philsky #hps

Two new papers out today on "determinism" co-authored with the foundations of (a)symmetries dream team: @jimweatherall.bsky.social, Hans Halvorson, and Thomas Barrett. #philsci #philsky

philsci-archive.pitt.edu/24881/

philsci-archive.pitt.edu/24883/

#philsky #philsci

Videos from the workshop on Symmetry and Structure that Clara Bradley and I organized in Irvine in September 2023 are now available online. Some very interesting stuff there! Enjoy!

jamesowenweatherall.com/symmetry-and...

youtube.com/playlist?lis...

"The universe is unknowable even if one were given an all-access pass to every possible observation at every possible place and time -- here, there, past, present, and future."
#physics #philsky #philsci

iai.tv/articles/the...

UC Irvine's Department of Logic & Philosophy of Science earns top spots in latest faculty rankings | Philosophical Gourmet Report’s 2024-25 update places @ucirvine.bsky.social faculty among the top in the English-speaking world for faculty excellence

www.socsci.uci.edu/newsevents/n...

New paper "On Privileged Coordinates and Kleinian Methods" just published online at Erkenntnis (joint work with Thomas Barrett). We investigate senses in which the "privileged coordinates" of a geometric space might have significance.

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

"Heraclitus-Maximal Worlds" was just published in the Journal of Philosophical Logic (joint work with Thomas Barrett). Bumper sticker version:

Einstein spacetime + Heraclitus asymmetry + Leibniz maximality = no empirical underdetermination

"The Malament-Manchak theorem shows that we can’t know how time began – or even if it began."

#physics #philsky #philsci