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October 2024

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Minkowski Institute - Call for Participation
by Vesselin Petkov Oct. 23, 2024

Oct. 23, 2024

Dear Colleagues, Minkowski Institute invites colleagues, working in areas related to the foundations and nature of spacetime, to participate in a meeting, which will address and deal with a disturbingly unprecedented (on two counts) situation in fundamental physics: It appears that the reality of spacetime is an experimental fact (as Minkowski de facto demonstrated), i.e., it appears experimentally confirmed that the concept of spacetime represents a real four-dimensional world with time as the fourth dimension. What makes this experimental support for the reality of spacetime unprecedented is that the experiments, which confirmed the kinematic relativistic effects, would be impossible if the world were not four-dimensional. To understand why this is so, it is sufficient only to see in Minkowski’s paper “Space and Time” that length contraction is impossible in a three-dimensional world. What also constitutes an unprecedented situation in fundamental physics is that, so far, most physicists have not addressed even Minkowski’s own arguments for the reality of spacetime; they simply ignored them arguing (at best) that the concept of spacetime is “just a description” and that “the question of the reality of spacetime belongs to philosophy”?! (both “justifications” for ignoring the question of the reality of spacetime are incorrect). However, as we all (in theory) know, physics, particularly fundamental physics, does not work in that way (by avoiding fundamental issues) and cannot advance by ignoring arguments, especially given that those arguments are firmly based on the experimental evidence to such an extent that experiments would be impossible if those arguments were wrong. Addressing Minkowski’s arguments for the reality of spacetime is of crucial importance for physicists because the physics of a three-dimensional world is fundamentally different from the physics of a four-dimensional world: - In a three-dimensional world physics deals with motions and interactions of three-dimensional particles / bodies. - In a four-dimensional world physics deals with interrelations between worldlines (or worldtubes in the case of extended bodies), as Minkowski explained, and “static” deformations of curved (non-geodesic) worldtubes because there is no dynamics in spacetime; it is incorrect even to say that a particle follows a timelike geodesic worldline because in spacetime the particle itself is a timelike geodesic worldline. The proposed meeting can become one of the biennial Minkowski meetings on the foundations of spacetime physics (https://www.minkowskiinstitute.com/meetings/) We are willing to co-organize such a meeting with other institutions. If interested and have any suggestions, please reply to this message or to mi(a)minkowskiinstitute.com. Best wishes, Vesselin Petkov One of the founders and current director of Minkowski Institute Montreal, Canada https://minkowskiinstitute.com <https://minkowskiinstitute.com/> vpetkov(a)minkowskiinstitute.com <mailto:vpetkov@minkowskiinstitute.com> Personal page: http://vesselinpetkov.com <http://vesselinpetkov.com/>

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16 October - Huw Price: Side-stepping the Rhinoceros: Copernican Pragmatism and Quantum Entanglement
by John Dougherty Oct. 9, 2024

Oct. 9, 2024

Dear all, Next week, the Logic and Philosophy of Science Colloquium at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy will be given by Huw Price, and may be of interest to subscribers of this list. The details are as follows: Talk: Huw Price (Cambridge) 16 October, 16:00 CEST, Ludwigstr. 31, ground floor, Room 021. > Side-stepping the Rhinoceros: Copernican Pragmatism and Quantum > Entanglement > > > In philosophy, as in science, it is often important to pay close > attention to the peculiarities of our own standpoint or perspective. > This move is particularly congenial to pragmatists, keen to expose > what William James called 'the trail of the human serpent'. A century > earlier, it was at the heart of Kant’s Copernican Revolution. > > > This talk, based on joint work with the physicist Ken Wharton, applies > this Copernican move to the understanding of quantum entanglement. > Entanglement is often regarded as the most puzzling feature of the > quantum world. Writing about its mysteries, Roger Penrose puts it like > this. > > > The first mystery is the phenomenon itself. How are we to come to > terms with quantum entanglement and to make sense of it in terms of > ideas that we can comprehend, so that we can manage to accept it as > something that forms an important part of the workings of our actual > universe? (Penrose 2004) > > > We propose an answer to Penrose’s question. It takes the relevant > peculiarity of our perspective on the world to be the fact that we can > often control it. Once we ‘side-step’ this perspective, and the > contingent physical facts on which it depends, entanglement turns out > to be explicable using notions familiar from causal modelling: it is a > special sort of ‘selection artefact’, or 'collider bias'. The > explanation seems to have been missed because the peculiarity of our > ordinary standpoint has not previously been taken into account. > > > The talk is based on joint work with Ken Wharton, accessible here: > https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.04571 > Best, John -- John Dougherty Assistant Professor Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy Lehrstuhl für Wissenschaftstheorie Fakultät für Philosophie, Wissenschaftstheorie und Religionswissenschaft Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Ludwigstraße 31 80539 München, Deutschland

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