Symposium on Time and Relativity
Participant Biographies
Richard T. W. Arthur - McMaster University
Richard T. W. Arthur is Professor of Philosophy at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, and is currently also President of the Canadian Society for History and Philosophy of Science/Société canadienne d’histoire et philosophie des sciences.
Dr. Arthur received his PhD in philosophy at the University of Western Ontario (London, Canada) in 1981. He taught philosophy for seventeen years at Middlebury College in Vermont, USA, and has also taught in Kenya, England, Canada, and Nigeria. He works largely in the history of philosophy, science and mathematics, and has published a book and many articles on the philosophy of Leibniz, Descartes, Newton and other early modern thinkers. In his recent research Dr. Arthur has published on the philosophy of time with special reference to problems of time in modern physics, on the history and philosophy of the infinite and the infinitely small, and on the epistemology of thought experiments. He is currently engaged in writing a logic textbook, a second book offering a novel interpretation of Leibniz, and a third manuscript on the interrelation of the concepts of force, activity and time in early modern thought.
Katherine Brading - University of Notre Dame
Katherine Brading is an assistant professor of philosophy. She received her DPhil from Oxford, where her thesis supervisor was Dr. Harvey Brown. Drs. Brading and Brown worked together on 'Noether's theorems', and have three joint publications on issues relating to symmetries in physics. Katherine’s current research interests in philosophy of physics include the early history of general relativity, structuralist approaches to physics, and Newton's conception of body. Katherine Brading and Elena Castellani are co-editors of Symmetries in Physics: Philosophical Reflections (Cambridge, 2002).
Harvey Brown - University of Oxford
Harvey Brown is Professor of Philosophy of Physics at Oxford University, where he has taught since 1984. Previously he taught at the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP) in Brazil for six years. He was trained in physics in New Zealand, and did his doctorate in the philosophy of physics at the University of London. His interestes are in the foundations of quantum mechanics, relativity theory and thermodynamics and in the role of symmetry principles in physics.
Clayton Gearhart - St. John's University
Clayton Gearhart received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota and is currently a professor of physics at the College of St. Benedict, St. John's University. His research interests include the history of physics, particularly late 19th/early 20th century thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. His amateur interests include relativity, computational physics, chaos, foundations of quantum mechanics and his Ph.D. research was in experimental liquid helium.
Lee Gohlike - Seven Pines Symposium
Lee Gohlike, the founder of the Seven Pines Symposium, has had a life-long interest in the history and philosophy of physics, which he has furthered through graduate studies at the Universities of Minnesota and Chicago. Lee is also the world expert in early Mercedes racing history.
Amit Hagar - Indiana University
Amit Hagar was born and educated in Israel, and recieved his B.A. (1996) and MA (2000) in philosophy from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His M.A. thesis on the hole argument and the ontology of spacetime theories. Ph.D. thesis, "Chance and Time" (2004) was written in Vancouver in the University of British Columbia and concerns the foundations of statistical physics. It was also published as an expository book on the philosophy of physics in Israel. My main interests span the foundations of modern physics, especially the origin and source of the probabilities one encounters in statistical and quantum mechanics, the philosophy of time, and the notion of physical computation, especially in the context of quantum information theory. I am currently engaged in several projects in those fields.
Geoffrey Hellman - University of Minnesota
Over the last decade and a half, my work has been concentrated in the areas of philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of science. In the former, I have been developing a modal-structural interpretation of mathematics, a variety of structuralism quite distinct from set theoretic or other Platonistic accounts. This also has concerned the closely related question of the scope and limits of nominalism. In a second line of research, I have been examining varieties of constructive mathematics (e.g. Bishop's constructivism, intuitionism, predicativism) and apparent limitations in connection with scientific applications, arising especially in quantum mechanics and space-time physics. Closely related is the whole question of indispensability arguments for classical mathematics.
In the philosophy of science, I have pursued work on the significance of the Bell results in the foundations of quantum mechanics, e.g., implications concerning determinism, locality, and realism (a kind of "experimental metaphysics," as Shimony has put it). Other contributions have included a critique of quantum logic, and, more recently, a volume of Minnesota Studies on recent approaches to the quantum measurement problem (co-edited with Richard Healey). I also continue to think about more general topics in philosophy of science such as Bayesian confirmation, reasonable realism, physicalism and unity of science. Finally, I continue to develop material in musical aesthetics, which I teach occasionally, informed through active work as a concert pianist.
Carl Hoefer - Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Carl Hoefer received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1992 and counts among his research interests: Philosophy and History of Physics, Philosophy of Science, Metaphysics. He is currently a Research Professor at the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies and the Independent University of Barcelona in Spain. Some of his recent publications include: "Determinism and Causality: Tension, or Outright Conflict?", Revista de Filosofia (2004) and "Humean Effective Strategies" in Proceedings of the 12th International Congress on Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science (2005).
Don Howard - University of Notre Dame
Don A. Howard received his Ph.D. from Boston University in 1979 and is currently Director of the Program in History and Philosophy of Science and Professor of Philosophy. His research interests include the philosophy of science, foundations of physics, and history of philosophy of science. Some of his recent work includes: Einstein: The Formative Years, 1879-1909, co-edited with John Stachel (2001);"Two Left Turns Make a Right: On the Curious Political Career of North American Philosophy of Science at Mid-century" (2003); "Lost Wanderers in the Forest of Knowledge: Some Advice on How to Think about the Relation between Discovery and Justification" (2003); "Who Invented the Copenhagen Interpretation: A Study in Mythology" (2004); "Einstein as a Philosopher of Science" (2005); and “Reduction and Emergence in the Physical Sciences: Some Lessons from the Particle Physics–Condensed Matter Physics Debate” (2005).
Michel Janssen - University of Minnesota
Michel Janssen is associate professor in the Program in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine and the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Minnesota. He studies the conceptual development of physics in the late 19th and early 20th century. He earned his Master's in theoretical physics at the University of Amsterdam and his Ph.D. in History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, working with another participant at the symposium, John Norton. His dissertation and several of his publications address themes discussed in Harvey Brown's book. Before coming to Minnesota, he worked for several years for the Einstein Papers Project, annotating material related to the genesis of general relativity. He has been offering a Freshman seminar called "Einstein for Everyone" and is co-editor of the forthcoming Cambridge Companion to Einstein.
Ernan McMullin - University of Notre Dame
Rev. Ernan McMullin is the O’Hara Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Notre Dame. He has written and lectured extensively on subjects ranging from the relationship between cosmology and theology, to the role of values in understanding science, to the impact of Darwinism on Western religious thought. He received his PhD from the University of Leuven and recently edited The Church and Galileo (2005).
John D. Norton - University of Pittsburgh
I was born and grew up in Sydney, Australia. I studied chemical engineering at the University of New South Wales (1971-74) and then worked for two years as a technologist at the Shell Oil Refinery at Clyde, Sydney. I then switched fields and began a doctoral program in the School of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of New South Wales (1978-1981). My dissertation was on the history of general relativity. When it was finished, I visited at the Einstein Papers Project (1982-83) when the Papers were located at Princeton University Press with John Stachel as editor. In September 1983, I came to Pittsburgh as a visitor in the Center for Philosophy of Science/visiting faculty member in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. I've been in the Department of HPS ever since. I was promoted to full professor in 1997, served as Chair in 2000-2005 and am now Director of the Center for Philosophy of Science, starting in September 2005.
Antigone Nounou - University of Minnesota
My main research interests revolve around the exploration of the relation between mathematics and physics, on the one hand, along with the relation between theories of physics and the physical world, on the other. Through the use of the highly geometrical quantum field theories as case studies, the aim of my research is to help clarify the role that mathematical structures play in scientific endeavor and to shed light on their ontological status. Indeed, as quantum field theories developed in the second half of the 20th century, it became clear that although certain of their mathematical structures do not correspond directly to physical, measurable entities, yet they are indispensable in scientific explanations and predictions; hence there is a call for them to be comprehended in ways other than realistic ones.
Oliver Pooley - Oriel College, Oxford University
University Lecturer (CUF) in Philosophy; Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy, Oriel College, Oliver Pooley read Physics and Philosophy at Balliol College, and took Part III of the Maths Tripos at St John's College, Cambridge, before returning to Oxford to do graduate work in Philosophy. Before taking up his current position at Oriel, he held a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship and college lectureship at Exeter College, Oxford. Most of his research is in the philosophy of physics, where he is especially interested in topics that overlap with metaphysics and the philosophy of language. In addition to the philosophy of physics, his teaching interests include logic, metaphysics and epistemology, the philosophy of language, and the philosophy of science.
Serge Rudaz - University of Minnesota
Serge Rudaz received her PhD from Cornell University in 1979 and is currently a Professor of Physics at the University of Minnesota. Her Research interests include: unified theories of elementary particle interactions and their phenomenology, applications to cosmology and astroparticle physics; supersymmetry; relativistic many-body physics, including phase transitions in quantum field theories at finite temperature and density; models of hadronic interactions; and physics of topological defect formation in the early universe and in condensed systems.
Robert Rynasiewicz - Johns Hopkins University
Robert Rynasiewicz is a Professor of Philosophy and internationally recognized philosopher and historian of science. In the last few years he has given talks at Amsterdam, Bern, Konstanz, Rome, Dubrovnik, Louvain, Vienna, Quebec, Vancouver, the Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte (Berlin), the Belgium Society for Logic and Philosophy of Science, and the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research (Altenberg, Austria). After postdoctoral work at Pittsburgh and Cornell, he taught at Case Western Reserve before coming to Hopkins.
His publications include numerous articles, especially on historical and foundational issues in space-time physics from the 17th-century to the present. Current research interests span history and foundations of 19th- and 20th-century physics, the philosophy of logic, language, and psychology. Teaching at Hopkins has included courses cross-listed in the Departments of Physics, Psychology, History of Science, and Computer Science. Rynasiewicz has held NSF, NEH, and Mellon Fellowships. He is a member of the Johns Hopkins Center for History and Philosophy of Science, an Adjunct Professor in Philosophy and the Committee on History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Maryland, a participant in the Baltimore-Washington Foundations of Physics Group, and a member of the Sylvester Institute for Mathematics, Computing, and Application (SIMCA).
Alan Shapiro - University of Minnesota
I am a historian of the physical sciences working in the period from the Scientific Revolution through the early nineteenth century. I am interested in the history of optics and mechanics and in the historical development of scientific methodology and experimental practice. In particular, I have focused on Isaac Newton's work (see my The Optical Papers of Isaac Newton, Volume 1: The Optical Lectures, 1670-1672, Cambridge University Press, 1984). I am also interested in the history of color theory and the interaction of art, science, and technology. I am currently editing the remaining two volumes of The Optical Papers of Isaac Newton.
Christopher Smeenk - University of Western Ontario
Christopher Smeenk is an assistant professor of Philosophy and received his Ph.D. in History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh in 2003. Recent publications include, “The Elusive Higgs Mechanism,” in the Philosophy of Science Association: Proceedings volume for 2004 meeting, “Einstein’s Contributions to Cosmology,” in The Cambridge Companion to Einstein¸ edited by M. Janssen and C. Lehner (2005), and “False Vacuum: Early Universe Cosmology and the Development of Inflation,” in The Universe of General Relativity, edited by J. Eisenstaedt and A. J. Kox, (November 2005).
Roger Stuewer - University of Minnesota
Roger Stuewer received his Ph.D. in the History of Science and Physics from the University of Wisconsin in 1968 and is currently a professor in the program of the History of Science and Technology. His research interests include the history of modern physics, especially the history of nuclear physics and evolution of nuclear models between the first and second world wars, setting these theoretical and experimental developments within their institutional, political and social contexts.
Brian Woodcock - Carleton College
Brian Woodcock received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine in 2005 and was the Rotman Postdoctoral Fellow in Philosophy of Science, Department of Philosophy at The University of Western Ontario from 2005 to 2007. He is currently a visiting assistant professor of Philosophy at Carleton College in Minnesota. His research interests include: Philosophy of Physics, Philosophy of Science, Epistemology, and Logic. His most recent publication is "Bloch's Paradox and the Nonlocality of Chance" in International Studies in the Philosophy of Science (2007).