IMPOSSIBLE TRIANGLES OF THOUGHT

OPENING CONFERENCE OF THE RADBOUD CENTER FOR NATURAL PHILOSOPHY

On 9 and 10 January 2025 the RCNP is celebrating its official opening. The event features renowned international speakers in the history, philosophy, and mathematics of physics. It includes four thematic sessions with talks and discussion, a banquet, and a theatre performance. The title of the conference refers to Penrose's impossible triangle (which appears in our logo) as well as to the book Triangles of Thought by Alain Connes, André Lichnerowicz and Marcel Paul Schützenberger about the intersection of mathematics, physics and philosophy, i.e. the disciplines that the RCNP aims to bring together.

Everyone is welcome at all talks and at the performance (Black Hole Variations by Theater AdHoc, Friday 13:30-14:30) but catering and banquet is strictly intended for registered participants (registration is closed). You can also follow the lectures online.

When: 9-10 January 2025
Where: Radboud University, Huygensgebouw, HG00.307 (ground floor)

Click here for more information on directions to the venue.

Speakers: Jeremy Butterfield, Erik Curiel, Henk de Regt, Dennis Dieks, Hans Halvorson, Klaas Landsman, Dennis Lehmkuhl, Kerry McKenzie, Carla Rita Palmerino, Tomasz Placek, James Read, Bryan Roberts, Flavio del Santo, Emilie Skulberg, Jos Uffink, Jeroen van Dongen, Sylvia Wenmackers, Lena Zuchowski

Organizing Committee: Silvester Borsboom, Klaas Landsman, Henk de Regt, Kian Salimkhani, Marij van Strien, Manus Visser, Martin Voggenauer, Karla Weingarten

Programme

January 9

09:00 – 09:30   Arrival

09:30 – 10:00   Introduction and official opening (Klaas Landsman, Carla Rita Palmerino, Henk de Regt)

Superheroes (Chair: Klaas Landsman)
10:00 – 10:45   Jeremy Butterfield: The Triangle of Natural Philosophy: a Tour d’Horizon
10:45 – 11:15   Break
11:15 – 12:00   Dennis Dieks: The Modal Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, Then and Now
12:00 – 12:45   Jos Uffink: The Erice Conference 1989, 62 Years of Uncertainty

12:45 – 12:55   Conference group picture

12:55 – 14:00   Lunch break

Black holes (Chair: Manus Visser)
14:00 – 14:45   Jeroen van Dongen: Stephen Hawking and the history of black hole radiation
14:45 – 15:30   Erik Curiel: ‘Information Loss’ Is Said in Many Ways, the Responses Legion, None Compelling
15:30 – 16:00   Break
16:00 – 16:45   Emilie Skulberg: Absence as existence: Visual evidence and arguments for the existence of supermassive black holes
16:45 – 17:30   Dennis Lehmkuhl: On Penrose’s Analogy between Curved Spacetime Regions and Optical Lenses and its role in the first singularity theorem

18:00 – 21:00    Buffet dinner in Huize Heyendaal, 5-10 minute walk (free for all registered participants)

January 10

Philosophy of physics (Chair: Kian Salimkhani)
09:00 – 09:45   Kerry McKenzie: Determinism as an effective metaphysics: Insights from Cassirer
09:45 – 10:30   Hans Halvorson: When is a theory deterministic?
10:30 – 11:00   Break
11:00 – 11:45   Lena Zuchowski: Are there fundamental dimensions of (dis)order?
11:45 – 12:30   Tomasz Placek On syntactic and semantic analyses of determinism (re-reading Montague)

12:30 – 13:30   Lunch break

13:30 – 14:30   Big Bang variations (Theater Adhoc)

14:30 – 14:45   Break

Into the future (Chair: Marij van Strien)
14:45 – 15:30   James Read: The future of philosophy of physics in 23 open problems: an homage to Hilbert
15:30 – 16:15   Flavio del Santo: The future of indeterminism looking at the past
16:15 – 16:30   Break
16:30 – 17:15   Bryan Roberts: On the ergodicity of worlds
17:15 – 18:00   Sylvia Wenmackers: Teaching the Next Generation of Natural Philosophers

18:00        Drinks and goodbye

END