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News

Woodward Workshop Cancelled

Posted on February 3, 2022 by cheryl

causation book cover

PLEASE NOTE: Due to the winter storm, the workshop “Causation With A Human Face” planned for Feb.4 has been postponed until further notice.

We will announce new dates as soon as we have them.

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Welcome, Shoshi!

Posted on January 20, 2022 by cheryl

We are very excited to welcome the newest member of the Center community! Shoshi Burd-Baugh is our Programs Administrator. Shoshi brings experience in event planning, social media, and was once curator of an art gallery. Stop by and say hello to him!

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Catching Up With Naftali Weinberger

Posted on January 11, 2022 by cheryl

Featured Former Fellow talks resume on January 25 when our speaker will be Naftali Weinberger (Postdoc 2018-19.) What’s he been up to since then? Find out.

naftali weinbergerWhere are you now?  At the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy

What are you working on?  Right now I have two primary projects: One on causation in dynamical systems and another on causally modeling discrimination. I’m also involved in several collaborations with people I know primarily through my time at the Center

Favorite memory of The Center?   This is a hard one! One of the first things that jumped to mind though was the time Bill and Barbara Wimsatt had the fellows over for pizza. They lived in a high amenity apartment complex in Lawrenceville where everyone was either a 28-year-old hipster or a Wimsatt, and it seems like they were basically co-opted by the building’s other residents as honorary grandparents. For some reason I found it very amusing to eat pizza with the other fellows in the lobby while watching an endless parade of millenials and their dogs. 

What you you say is your greatest non-professional achievement since leaving the Center? Learning German. I even on occasion have gotten Germans to laugh (with me, I think). 

What’s the best book/movie/tv you’ve enjoyed lately? I really enjoyed Jordan Peele’s “Us”. I also think lots of Center members would enjoy Bill Bryson’s recent book on the history of the human body. Much of it will be familiar, but it has lots of great HPS anecdotes and is written with so much infectious enthusiasm that it’s a joy to read. 

Join us for Naftali’s talk, “Signal Manipulation & the Causal Analysis of Racial Discrimination” online only on Jan. 25.
Register here

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Apply for PSP6!

Posted on December 27, 2021 by cheryl

psp6

Applications are now open for our annual Pittsburgh Summer Program in Philosophy of Science for Underrepresented Groups (aka PSP.)

This week-long intensive course introduces undergraduate students to important concepts and debates in Philosophy of Science taught by top faculty from Pitt, CMU, and elsewhere.  PSP6 will take place July 11-15, 2022.

The program is designed for Undergraduate Students who are highly motivated and show strong academic promise and interest in the philosophy of science, including but not limited to:

  • Women
  • LGBTQIA+
  • Underrepresented racial/ethnic backgrounds
  • Students with disabilities
  • First-generation undergraduates
  • Undergraduates from groups underrepresented in philosophy of science

Read More & Apply

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COVID Plan, Spring 2022

Posted on December 16, 2021 by cheryl

mask up

Unless University policy changes, we will be continuing the same COVID mitigation practices from the Fall term.  They are:

All individuals, regardless of vaccination status, must wear a face covering in campus buildings, except while eating or drinking in a designated dining area and when in an enclosed private space (e.g., private study room or private office.)

Non-Pitt individuals who want to attend our in-person talks must send an email in advance to Katie Labuda (kathleenlabuda@pitt.edu) requesting Guest Building Access, or you will not be able to enter the Cathedral of Learning.

Lunchtime Talks will take place in person. The speaker as well as the attendees will be masked during the whole talk and Q&A. Contact tracing will be in place and we will ask you to write down your name and email on a sign-in sheet. We will also stream the talks on YouTube livestream, and you will have the option of attending and possibly asking questions through Zoom. Zoom links will be posted to our calendar.

For now, we will not offer food during the talks. To-go snacks will be provided at 11:50am for you to take back to your office and eat before or after the talk. So that the audience can remain masked, there will be no eating during the talk itself.

Lunchtime talks will be on a slightly compacted schedule: Food will be available at 11:50am. The talk will start at 12:10 and end at 1:00pm sharp. Q&A will be from 1:00pm to 1:30pm.

Most Annual Lecture Series talks will be in person, but a few might be on line. Attendees will be masked, and contact tracing in place. In person talks will also be streamed. Zoom links will be posted to our calendar.

Workshops & Conferences will be in person and attendees will be masked.

Several Online Only events will be offered throughout the year, namely The Center Debates series and the Featured Former Fellow Lunchtime Talk.  See calendar for details.

These policies may change during the semester in light of the pandemic and Pitt’s guidelines.

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Tony Beavers Talk Moved Online

Posted on November 19, 2021 by cheryl

Please note, Anthony Beavers’ talk scheduled for Friday, Nov. 19 has been moved to online-only.

See the talk listing for Zoom registration.

Or, you can stream the talk live on our YouTube channel.

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Catching Up With Erik Curiel

Posted on November 18, 2021 by cheryl

erik curielOur last Featured Former Fellows talk of the fall is happening right after Thanksgiving break! These online-only talks occur throughout the year and reunite our Center community with past Fellows from around the globe.

The next Featured Former Fellow will be Erik Curiel on Tuesday, Nov. 30. Erik was a postdoc Fellow at the Center in 2008-09 under then-Center Director John D. Norton. We sat down with Erik ahead of his talk to catch up with him.

Register for Erik’s talk

 

1. Where are you now?

I am assistant professor at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy (LMU Munich) and Senior Research Fellow at the Black Hole Initiative (Harvard).  Between 2016-2019, I split my time eight months inMunich and four months at Harvard; starting this year, I’ll be spending ten months in Munich, two months at Harvard.  Munich is home.

2.  What are you working on?

I am working on a number of different projects at the moment: writing a book on foundational problems in black hole thermodynamics and semi-classical gravity; writing a series of papers developing a novel account of the structure and semantics of physical theories, including an analysis of the way that theory and experiment make contact with each other; trying to figure out a new way to attack the Measurement Problem; and vigorously championing Pragmatism à la Peirce, Carnap and Stein in contraposition to standard forms of realism and instrumentalism

3. What is your favorite memory of The Center?

My favorite memory of the Center, hmm, that’s hard.  I think it’s a 3-way tie.  One is pleasantly sozzled karaoke with all the fellows at Bootleggers (with Knickerbocker beers for $1!), followed by heroically dressed hot-dogs and ridiculously large servings of fries at The O.  The second is a collective memory, all the weekly fellows’ reading-group meetings.  We had a superlative group of fellows my year, collegial and fun as all hell.  (It was the Year of the Italian Women.)  The third is dropping into John Norton’s office whenever the mood struck me to run some new idea by John and having him invariably analyze and reconstruct it on the spot to present it back to me in marvelously simpler, clearer, and more illuminating form.

4. Greatest non-professional achievement since leaving the Center

My greatest non-professional achievement—continually learning to be an ever more psychologically well adjusted and healthier person as I grow older.

5. Best book/movie/tv you’ve seen this year?

I’ll take “this year” to mean going back to May 2020, not the 2021 calendar year.  Best book:  “The Guermantes Way” (Volume 3 of “À la Recherche du Temps Perdu,” now working on volume 4); best movie: “Céline et Julie Vont en Bateau” (for the 4th or 5th time, but it’s still the best); best tv show: “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (again, for the 4th or 5th time, but still the best!).

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James Weatherall Returns for ALS and Science Revealed

Posted on November 17, 2021 by cheryl

Former Center Fellow James Owen Weatherall (author of the popular book Void: The Strange Physics of Nothing), will return to Pittsburgh in December for two events.

On December 2, he will be the guest speaker at “Nothingness: So Much to Talk About!” (Part of the Science Revealed public lecture series in partnership with with the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts & Sciences). This will be an online talk and registration is required.  For further details and to register, visit the Science Revealed webpage.

Then on Friday, December 3, Jim will give the Adolf Grünbaum Memorial Lecture of the Center’s Annual Lecture Series.  His subject will be, “The Philosophy Behind Dark Matter.”  The talk will be accessible both in person and online; for more details please see the full event listing.

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PHEP 2021 is now PHEP 2022!

Posted on November 4, 2021 by cheryl

We now have a date for the Particle and High-Energy Physics conference, originally planned for Nov. 2021 but rescheduled due to COVID travel restrictions.

The new dates are March 26-27, 2022.

Read more

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Congratulations Darrell

Posted on October 22, 2021 by cheryl

Darrell RowbottomOur Visiting Fellow Darrell Rowbottom (Lingnan University, Hong Kong) has just had a paper accepted for publication.

The paper, entitled “Why Might an Instrumentalist Endorse Bohmian Mechanics?” was written during Darrell’s time at the Center and will be published in Quantum Mechanics and Fundamentality: Naturalizing Quantum Theory between Scientific Realism and Ontological Indeterminacy, V. Allori (ed.), (Dordrecht: Springer) (Forthcoming)

 

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PHEP Postponed

Posted on October 22, 2021 by cheryl

phep 2021

The Particle and High-Energy Physics conference, scheduled for Nov. 6-7, has been postponed until spring.  The organizing committee hopes that at that time, international travel will be easier for potential speakers and participants.

We apologize for any disruptions, and hope that you will join us in the spring.  Check back for the new date announcement.

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Catching Up With Yann Benétreau-Dupin

Posted on October 19, 2021 by cheryl

yann benetreau-dupin

Our Featured Former Fellows Lunchtime Talk series continues next week on Oct.26 when we’ll be joined by Yann Benétreau-Dupin.  Yann was a Postdoc Fellow at the Center during the 2016-17 year.  What’s he up to these days? Find out below, and of course
join us for Yann’s talk.

 

 

1. Where are you now?

I now work as a Senior Editor for PLOS ONE, the large, multidisciplinary, open-access journal of the Public Library of Science (PLOS). As of this writing, I am working from home just a few miles away from my office—still almost empty because of the pandemic—in San Francisco.

I am also a visiting researcher at San Francisco State University, where I previously worked as a Visiting Assistant Professor right after I left the Center.

2.  What are you working on?

At PLOS ONE, I oversee the peer-review process for some of the many thousand submissions we receive each year: I select submissions that are ready for peer-review, help ensure that our articles meet our publication criteria for rigor, ethics, and data availability. In short, I tackle the reproducibility crisis one paper at a time.

As one of two dozen staff editors, I help define the editorial policies of a multidisciplinary journal that welcomes all rigorous science, regardless of how novel or impactful the findings are. I work more specifically in the behavioral and social sciences team, along with psychologists, an economist, and a neuroscientist.

For instance, I recently led the development of registered reports as a new article type at the journal, a format whereby papers are reviewed both before and after the empirical part of the work so as to improve transparency in reporting and minimize publication bias (you can find more details about it here).

Occasionally, I have to follow specific submissions very closely, particularly when they deal with sensitive topics that could easily be misinterpreted in the media (see for instance this article on police deadly use of force for which we commissioned a formal comment to help contextualize the results).

With colleagues at SFSU (Isabelle Peschard and Chris Wessels), I am working on a book on the philosophy of risk. It should come to a bookstore or classroom near you next year or so, perhaps? This project grew out of an undergraduate class that works well to introduce students, non-majors in particular, to issues in epistemology, philosophy of science, but also ethics.

3. Favorite memory of The Center?

It’s difficult to pick just one favorite memory from my time at the Center, between the city of Pittsburgh itself, the vibrant philosophy community both at Pitt and CMU, an office window with Gothic arches, the incredible talk series, or a formal epistemology workshop on ignorance I was fortunate enough to organize with John Norton and Lee Elkin.

My favorite memory of the Center is probably the Fellows’ reading group weekly sessions where we talked in depth, in a collegial but lively way, about our research in progress, in turn.

4. Greatest non-professional achievement since leaving the Center?

I have become an amateur developmental psychologist (see photo).

5. Best book/movie/tv you’ve seen this year?

After more than a year trapped at home I feel like I have to answer Groundhog Day, no? Other than that, I found Michael Sandel’s Tyranny of Merit thought-provoking and unsettling (and somewhat uncomfortable), in a good way.

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Visiting Fellowships 2022-23

Posted on October 15, 2021 by cheryl

If you’ve ever wanted to join the Center community as a Visiting Fellow, we are now accepting applications for the 2022-23 academic year!

Visiting Fellows have no formal duties. They are expected to pursue their own research, to give a lunchtime talk, and to participate in the intellectual life of the Center by attending talks and discussions.

We encourage all interested philosophers of science to apply.  We particularly welcome submissions from members of underrepresented groups.

Deadline for applications is December 12, 2021.

For more details and to apply….

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Postdoc Fellowships 2022-23

Posted on October 12, 2021 by cheryl

Applications are now open for Postdoc Fellowships for the 2022-23 academic year!

Postdoctoral Fellowships enable philosophers of science within five years of their doctorates to spend a two-term academic year working in the Center for Philosophy of Science on a project in philosophy of science that they nominate. Two Postdoctoral Fellowships are offered each year.

The Center encourages applications from assistant professors in the early stages of their careers as well as from scholars with newly awarded doctorates. We particularly welcome submissions from members of underrepresented groups.

Deadline for applications is December 12, 2021.

For more details and to apply….

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Catching Up With Peter Vickers

Posted on September 22, 2021 by cheryl

peter vickers 2021Next week we’ll be kicking off our new Lunchtime Talk series Featured Former Fellows! These online-only talks will occur throughout the year and reunite our Center community with past Fellows from around the globe.

Our first Featured Former Fellow will be Peter Vickers on Tuesday, Sept. 28. Peter was a postdoc Fellow at the Center in 2010-11 under then-Center Director John D. Norton. We sat down with Peter ahead of his talk to catch up with him.

1. Where are you now?

University of Durham, UK

2.  What are you working on?

Just in the very final stages of completing a monograph entitled “Identifying Future-Proof Science.”

3.  What is your favorite memory of The Center?

So many!

If I had to pick one: Probably February 2011, being grilled on my 5000 words by John Norton and the 2010-11 Fellows in the Center reading group. An experience I’ll never forget!

4. What would you say is your greatest non-professional achievement since leaving the Center?

Raising two kids, now aged 7 and 9. I also ran a 50 mile ultramarathon in the mountains of Wales, but that’s nothing compared with raising kids!

5. Best book/movie/tv you’ve read/seen this year?

TV: My Octopus Teacher
Fiction Book: “Normal People” (Sally Rooney)
Non-fiction book: “Other Minds” (Peter Godfrey-Smith)

Click here for details and to register for Peter’s talk.

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Senior Visiting Fellow Conference Announced

Posted on September 15, 2021 by cheryl

We are pleased to announce the date and topic of this year’s Senior Visiting Fellow conference, designed by our current SVF Heather Douglas.

heather douglasInstitutions and the Scientific Research Agenda
April 8-10, 2022

“Which scientific research gets pursued, and the details of how it gets pursued, is greatly influenced by the institutional structures which support science. By institutions, we mean those established social structures that direct resources (of various kinds, from money to intellectual property to ethical approval to jobs) for science. Key institutions for shaping the scientific research agenda include universities, funding agencies, and patent offices. This workshop will focus on what these institutions should be aiming to do and how should they do it.”

Keynote speakers will be: David Guston (ASU), Joyce Havstad (Utah), Shobita Parthasarathy (U Michigan), and Alison Wylie (UBC)

The programming committee is also accepting proposals for additional participants in the conference now through November 20, 2021.

More details

 

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The Center’s COVID Plan, Fall Term 2021

Posted on August 25, 2021 by cheryl

mask up

This Fall we will welcome back back in-person Fellows and in-person events in compliance with the University’s COVID-19 guidelines, with additional precautions added.

All individuals, regardless of vaccination status, must wear a face covering in campus buildings, except while eating or drinking in a designated dining area and when in an enclosed private space (e.g., private study room or private office.)

Non-Pitt individuals who want to attend our in-person talks must send an email in advance to Katie Labuda (kathleenlabuda@pitt.edu) requesting Guest Building Access, or you will not be able to enter the Cathedral of Learning.

Lunchtime Talks will take place in person. The speaker as well as the attendees will be masked during the whole talk and Q&A. Contact tracing will be in place and we will ask you to write down your name and email on a sign-in sheet. We will also stream the talks on YouTube livestream, and you will have the option of attending and possibly asking questions through Zoom. Zoom links will be posted to our calendar.

For now, we will not offer food during the talks. To-go snacks will be provided at 11:50am for you to take back to your office and eat before or after the talk. So that the audience can remain masked, there will be no eating during the talk itself.

Lunchtime talks will be on a slightly compacted schedule: Food will be available at 11:50am. The talk will start at 12:10 and end at 1:00pm sharp. Q&A will be from 1:00pm to 1:30pm.

Most Annual Lecture Series talks will be in person, but a few might be on line. Attendees will be masked, and contact tracing in place. In person talks will also be streamed. Zoom links will be posted to our calendar.

Workshops & Conferences will be in person and attendees will be masked.

Several Online Only events will be offered throughout the year, namely The Center Debates series and the Featured Former Fellow Lunchtime Talk.  See calendar for details.

These policies may change during the semester in light of the pandemic and Pitt’s guidelines.

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Goodbye Alex!

Posted on August 24, 2021 by cheryl

We are sad to announce that Alex Magee, our amazing Program Administrator, has left the Center to take a new position in Pitt’s Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences.

Alex joined the Center just one month before the pandemic shut down our operations in 2020, so most of you will only be familiar with her as a friendly face on Zoom.  However, behind the scenes, Alex was an incredible asset to the Center’s operations.  We will miss her diligence and unflagging dedication to the Center’s programs, but we congratulate her on her new position!

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Call For Papers – Particle Physics Conference

Posted on August 10, 2021 by cheryl

phep 2021

The CFP for our Early Career Conference in Philosophy of Particle & High Energy Physics (Nov. 6 – Sunday, Nov.7, 2021) is now open.

Proposals for contributed talks are invited on any topic within the general area of high-energy and particle physics, construed broadly to include cosmology, astrophysics and quantum field theory insofar as they overlap with issues in particle physics.

Learn more about the PHEP conference here.

 

 

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Welcome 2021 Fellows

Posted on August 3, 2021 by cheryl

The Center is pleased to announce our Fall 2021 Visiting Fellows. We are very excited and hopeful that this will be the first group of Fellows to return to in-person work at the Center since Spring 2020. Please join us in welcoming them to Pittsburgh!

Senior Visiting Fellow:
Heather Douglas, Michigan State University

Anthony Beavers, University of Evansville
Hyunduek Cheon, Seoul National University
Brian McLoone, Higher School of Economics
Matthew Parker, University of Western Ontario
Darrell Rowbottom, Lingnan University

PostDoc Fellows:
Ravit Dotan, UC Berkeley
Aydin Mohseni, UC Irvine

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Thanks, PSP students!

Posted on July 22, 2021 by cheryl

psp5

The fifth annual Pittsburgh Summer Program in Philosophy of Science for Underrepresented Groups wrapped up last week, and a great (and intellectually stimulating) time was had by all.  Once again, the PSP program had to take place on Zoom, but that didn’t keep our students from being enthusiastic, engaged, and engaging.  Thank you, PSP5 cohort (and faculty)!  Stop by and visit us soon.

Fabio Cabrera, Cornell University
Lawrence Cao, Johns Hopkins University
Joe Ding, Haverford College
Liz Frissell, Occidental College
Eva Gockowski, University of Pittsburgh
Roosevelt Lai, Beloit College
Clyde LeMoine, University of South Carolina
Kota Lowe, Bard College
Kaidi Pan, University of Chicago
Patrick Pan, University of Cambridge
Sophie Pollack-Milgate, Brown University
Jiarui Qu, UCLA
Hassan Saleemi, University of Illinois at Chicago
Emily Scholfield, Bucknell University
Zeke Vergara, Dartmouth College

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The First Issue of Philosophy of Medicine

Posted on July 15, 2021 by cheryl

The first issue of Philosophy of Medicine (sponsored in part by The Center) has been published.

Philosophy of Medicine is an open-access journal that publishes exceptional original philosophical research and perspectives on all aspects of medicine, including medical research and practices. Through its public-facing section The Examination Room, it also publishes content for the wider public, including health professionals and health scientists.

The mission of Philosophy of Medicine is to serve as the flagship journal for the field by advancing research in philosophy of medicine, by engaging widely with medicine, health sciences and the public, and by providing open-access content for all without charging authors publication fees.

The Journal was started in 2020 by Alex Broadbent and Jonathan Fuller and is published through Open Journal Systems (OJS) by the University of Pittsburgh Library System.

Read the issue here: http://philmed.pitt.edu/philmed/issue/view/3

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PSP5

Posted on May 29, 2021 by cheryl

Announcing our student cohort for the 5th annual Pittsburgh Summer Program in Philosophy of Science for Underrepresented Groups

Fabio Cabrera, Cornell University
Lawrence Cao, Johns Hopkins University
Joe Ding, Haverford College
Liz Frissell, Occidental College
Eva Gockowski, University of Pittsburgh
Roosevelt Lai, Beloit College
Clyde LeMoine, University of South Carolina
Kota Lowe, Bard College
Kaidi Pan, University of Chicago
Patrick Pan, University of Cambridge
Sophie Pollack-Milgate, Brown University
Jiarui Qu, UCLA
Hassan Saleemi, University of Illinois at Chicago
Emily Scholfield, Bucknell University
Zeke Vergara, Dartmouth College

Congratulations, students!  We’re looking forward to meeting you all.

The PSP will take place virtually from July 12-16.  Participating faculty are Michael Dietrich, Jonathan Fuller, Lisa Parker, Edouard Machery, Sandra D. Mitchell, John D. Norton, and Erica Schumener from the University of Pittsburgh, Christopher Weaver from the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), and Wayne Wu of CMU.

Learn more about the Pittsburgh Summer Program here.

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Ryan Nefdt’s New Book

Posted on May 11, 2021 by cheryl

Ryan Nefdt (Univ. of Cape Town), a Spring 2021 Visiting Fellow, has edited and contributed a chapter to a newly-published work on philosophy of language.

The Philosophy and Science of Language, part of the “Interdisciplinary Perspectives” series, is available now from Springer.

This volume brings together a diverse range of scholars to address important philosophical and interdisciplinary questions in the study of language. Linguistics throughout history has been a conduit to the study of the mind, brain, societal structure, literature and history itself. The epistemic and methodological transfer between the sciences and humanities in regards to linguistics has often been documented, but the underlying philosophical issues have not always been adequately addressed.

The volume also features new work by Center Resident Fellow Kate Stanton (Univ. of Pittsburgh, Philosophy.)  See Springer’s website for more details and to order.

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Hannah Rubin Wins NSF Grant

Posted on April 28, 2021 by cheryl

Hannah Rubin (Spring 2021 Visiting Fellow) has been awarded a five-year grant from the National Science Foundation.

The grant begins this summer and the topic is: “Race, Gender, and the Science of Science.”  An excerpt from her abstract is below.  Congratulations, Hannah!

 

hannah rubinThe “science of science” has recently exploded in popularity as researchers turn scientific methods of investigation around to investigate the practice of science itself. While some attention has been paid to issues of marginalization and representation, these concerns have generally not been brought to bear on other questions within the science of science regarding how to enhance scientific progress. The research component of this project fills the resulting gaps in our understanding. The project demonstrates when attempts to improve science not only further entrench (or even amplify) current injustices, but backfire, ultimately impeding scientific progress. Moreover, it examines how ideas spread throughout diverse communities, both providing insight into how current inequities hinder scientific progress and illuminating questions surrounding belief spread and polarization. Finally, it uncovers hidden, unsuspected roadblocks for marginalized groups and suggests potential remedies, promoting diversity in scientific fields. This research component is intertwined with teaching and outreach components, with initiatives including the development of courses discussing diverse methods used to investigate scientific practice (e.g., from philosophy, history, sociology, science of science), a national workshop for members of underrepresented/marginalized groups intending to pursue research in the science of science, and innovative K-12 STEM programming which demonstrates the importance of diversity in action.

This project employs tools from evolutionary game theory and network science to provide a picture of how aspects of social identity, e.g. race and gender, matter both to scientific progress and to how researchers scientifically investigate the institution of science. 

 

 

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2021- 22 Fellows Announced!

Posted on March 17, 2021 by cheryl

The Center is pleased to announce our list of the Fellows who will be joining us for the 2021-22 academic year.  We’re especially happy to have some past visitors back with us in new roles.  Many more details will follow, but for now, here is the complete list:

Senior Visiting Fellow
Heather Douglas, Michigan State University

Fall Visiting Fellows
Brian McLoone, Higher School Economics (Moscow)
Anthony Beavers, University of Evansville
Matthew Parker, University of Western Ontario
Darrell Rowbottom, Lingnan University
Hyundeuk Cheon, Seoul National University

Spring Visiting Fellows
Leonardo Bich, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU)
Laura Menatti Passages UMR 5319 CNRS (Bordeaux)
Eugen Fisher, University of East Anglia
Ruth Kastner, University of Maryland
Serife Tekin, UT at San Antonio

Postdocs
Ravit Dotan, UC Berkeley
Aydin Mohseni, UC Irvine

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Podcast With Riet Van Bork

Posted on March 12, 2021 by cheryl

One of this year’s post-doc Fellows, Riet Van Bork, sat down with two University of Amsterdam undergraduates for a podcast interview on how the current pandemic times influence different research areas, and other things.  Enjoy!

 

Podcast: Let’s Mingle #1 – The Rainbow

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New Fellows’ Publications

Posted on February 23, 2021 by cheryl

Congrats to our Visiting Fellows Hannah Rubin and Chris Weaver for their recent publications!

You can find Hannah Rubin’s new publication “Reintroducing Kin Selection to the Human Behavioral Sciences” in the Jan. 2021 issue of Philosophy of Science and Prof. Christopher Weaver’s paper “In Praise of Clausius Entropy: Reassessing the Foundations of Boltzmannian Statistical Mechanics” will be forthcoming in Foundations of Physics.

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Archival Fellowship

Posted on February 22, 2021 by cheryl

archives of scientific philosophy
Courtesy of the ULS

The Summer Archival Fellowship is open for applications.

This unique position will give the appointee the opportunity to work with the University of Pittsburgh Library System’s one-of-a-kind Archives of Scientific Philosophy.  Here you can find notes, drafts, personal papers, and more from Carnap, Hempel, Reichenbach, and others.

The Fellowship will be for one month in summer 2021.  For more details and to apply, see here.

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Cosmology Beyond Spacetime

Posted on January 6, 2021 by cheryl

Theories of quantum gravity suggest that classical spacetime may not be fundamental, but only arise as higher order phenomena. What implications does such a possibility have for cosmology, which generally assumes the classical framework of general relativity? Such implications are in part physical, as one expects new physics to play a role in Planckian scales, for instance in the early universe. But they are also conceptual and methodological. How does the physics of a whole universe relate to the physics of its parts? What reasoning is involved in drawing inferences for the early universe and the physics of the very small, from observation of the current universe? In regimes in which classical spacetime breaks down, how are observables, laws, or indeed dynamics to be understood — and what of the universe ‘before’ the Big Bang?

In the seminar, leading philosophers and physicists will address these questions from the point of view of a range of approaches to quantum gravity.

The seminar is a collaboration between The Center for Philosophy of Science, and the Cosmology Beyond Spacetime project funded by the John Templeton Foundation.

WEDNESDAYS 10:15 AM – 12:00 PM EST

Talks in this series will be held in Zoom webinar format and pre-registration is required.  You may register for all talks, or just a few.

REGISTER HERE:  https://pitt.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_BYAmu_RxTeCCSU7JXYk_Ig

Titles, abstracts, coming soon.

Speakers

Feb 3:  “Laws For Nowhere”  Nick Huggett, University of Illinois at Chicago, Senior Visiting Fellow at The Center

Abstract: The standard concept of law is, I suggest, significantly spatiotemporal, posing the question of how there can be laws in non-spatiotemporal theories, and most pointedly how laws could hold in non-spatiotemporal regions of spacetime. I describe a couple of quantum gravity models of the Big Bang (in string theory and group field theory), in a provisional attempt to demonstrate how such questions might arise.

Feb 10:  “Laws Beyond Spacetime”  Christian Wüthrich, University of Geneva

Abstract: Quantum gravity’s suggestion that spacetime may be emergent and so only exist contingently would force a radical reconception of extant analyses of laws of nature. Humeanism presupposes a spatiotemporal mosaic of particular matters of fact on which laws supervene. I will show how the Humean supervenience basis of non-modal facts can be reconceived, avoiding a reliance on fundamental spacetime. However, it is unclear that naturalistic forms of Humeanism can maintain their commitment to there being no necessary connections among distinct entities. This talk is based on a joint project with Vincent Lam.

Feb 17:  “Quantum Gravity in Practice”  Francesca Vidotto, Western University

Abstract: I present a recent concrete calculation in Spinfoam Cosmology -the application of the covariant LQG techniques to the cosmos- as an example to discuss a number of conceptual issues that are at the core of quantum gravity and cosmology. These include: What are the observables when localization does not rely on background space and time? What are the degrees of freedom? What is the role of quantum fluctuations of spacetime? What’s the interplay between the Planck scale and the cosmological scale? How should we think about time in this picture?

Feb 24:  “Temporal Naturalism”  Lee Smolin, Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics

I discuss the progress of a research program called temporal naturalism, whose aim is to reframe naturalism and relationalism based on the hypotheses that time is fundamental, while space is emergent.  By the fundamentality of time we mean that all that is real are causal processes that continually make definite facts out of previously indefinite possibilities, thereby producing novel events out of predecessor events.  Good be-ables to construct such a theory from are the views of events, which describe what properties an event was endowed with by its predecessor events, such as energy and momentum. Thus there is a single universe made up of partial views of itself.

In a relational setting and with no distance, coordinates, fields, or trajectories to draw from, the dynamics must be formulated in terms of views, and in particular in terms of differences amongst views. The change between the view of an event and its immediate predecessors provides a notion of kinetic energy while potential energy is related to the variety, which is the total diversity of present causally unrelated views. This is enough to derive a version of many body quantum theory; which lives in a space that we show emerges from the solutions of the theory.

Thus the program shows promise of reconciling both the problems of quantum foundations and quantum gravity, within a single completion.

The part of the program just described has been developed under the names of energetic causal sets and the causal theory of views.  Another key aspect is the view that the laws of physics cannot be fixed, but must evolve, in a way as to explain how the choices the universe has made of the fundamental forces and particles have come about through an evolutionary, dynamical process.  If there is time I will discuss three realizations of this idea: cosmological natural selection, the principle of precedence, and the hypothesis that the vacua of quantum fields can learn to navigate a landscape of possible laws, using the same mechanisms that allow a deep neural network to learn.

This work has appeared in six books and a number of papers; key collaborators have included Julian Barbour, Fotini Markopoulou, Stuart Kauffman, Joao Magueijo, Stephon Alexander, Roberto Mangabeira Unger, Jaron Lanier, Marina Cortes, Andrew Liddle and Clelia Verde.

March 3:  “Decoupling from the Initial State?”  Christopher Smeenk, Western University

According to inflationary cosmology, the universe passed through a transient phase of exponential expansion that leaves several characteristic imprints in the universe’s post-inflationary state. This paradigm has enjoyed considerable phenomenological success, as a wide range of inflationary models are compatible with observations. The extent to which this success lends credibility to inflation has been a subject of ongoing debate. Here I will focus on whether the predictions of inflation are robust to changes in high-energy physics, or to features of the pre-inflationary initial state. The prospect of describing the early universe successfully without resolving the mysteries of quantum gravity has always been one of inflation’s appealing features. I will review arguments that inflation does not decouple from high energy physics in the same sense as other effective field theories in physics. Establishing how inflation can be implemented in a theory of quantum gravity is an ongoing challenge, and doing so is needed to address several long-standing foundational questions.

March 10:  “If Time Had No Beginning”  Fay Dowker, Imperial College London

Could the universe have had no beginning? I don’t mean, in raising this question, to deny or throw doubt on Big Bang cosmology and the existence in the past of a hot, dense state of Planckian curvature and temperature. But, in that case, how is the question to be interpreted given that—if we accept the standard cosmology— the Lorentzian manifold structure of spacetime breaks down at the Big Bang? Certainly,  the continuum concept of time in our cosmological epoch “begins” at the Big Bang. Can we even ask what happened “before” that?  The causal set approach to the problem of quantum gravity provides an arena in which to address the question of origins, in which it makes sense to ask what happened before the Big Bang and in which a clear distinction can be made between models of the universe which are “past infinite” and “past finite”. I will describe work with Stav Zalel and Bruno Bento in which we construct a framework for dynamics for causal sets which can result in past infinite universes.

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