Reading Group

The biweekly RCNP reading group takes usually place on Tuesdays at 15:30 and covers a variety of topics in the history and philosophy of physics and mathematics. The current ``season'', running from 4 February to 1 April, focuses on the foundations of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. The next season, from 15 April to the end of June, will be about scientific representation and models. For questions, please contact Kian Salimkhani.

When: See schedule below
Where: Erasmus building 18.02

Schedule

4 February 2025
Frigg and Werndl, Foundations of Statistical Mechanics

18 Febuary 2025
Jos Uffink, Bluff Your Way into the Second Law of Thermodynamics

4 March 2025
Jos Uffink, Compendium of the Foundations of Classical Statistical Physics (pages 1-87, i.e. up to and including Gibbs)

18 March 2025
Jos Uffink, Compendium of the Foundations of Classical Statistical Physics (remainder)

1 April (not a joke) 2025
Lena Zuchowski, From Randomness and Entropy to the Arrow of Time

15 April 2025
Nguyen and Frigg, Scientific Representation

Previous readings

2024

Connes, Lichnerowicz and Schutzenberger: Triangle de Pensées (Triangle of Thought)

Patricia Palacios, Emergence and Reduction in Physics

Kerry McKenzie, Fundamentality and Grounding

Nazim Bouatta and Jeremy Butterfield, On Emergence in Gauge Theories at the 't Hooft Limit

Alexandre Guay and Olivier Sartenaer: A new look at emergence. Or when after is different

Sebastian de Haro: Towards a Theory of Emergence for the Physical Sciences

Sébastien Rivat: Open systems across scales

Sébastien Rivat: Effective theories and infinite idealizations

Sébastien Rivat: Drawing scales apart

Sébastien Rivat: Renormalization scrutinized

Philip W. Anderson: More is different

Jeremy Butterfield: Less is different

Jeremy Butterfield: Emergence, Reduction and Supervenience: A Varied Landscape

Routledge Companion to Phenomenology: Logic (Tieszen) and Philosophy of mathematics (Hartimo and Haaparanta)

Edmund Husserl: Addendum III to the Crisis

Edmund Husserl: Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology

2023

Wayne Myrvold: On some early objections to Bohm’s theory

Marij van Strien: Why Bohm was never a determinist

Klaas Landsman: Bohmian mechanics is not deterministic

David Bohm: Causality and Chance in Modern Physics

Klaas Landsman: Getting even with Heisenberg

Werner Heisenberg: Reality and its Order