Principles in Physics

Session

Session

27 Mar 2023, 13:00

O.07.24 (Bergische Universität Wuppertal)

76. Consistency as a principle in the search for new theory

Karen Crowther

27/03/2023, 13:00

Consistency is the most basic principle that constrains any theory, whether physical or philosophical. This principle comes in various forms, including: internal consistency, external consistency, and empirical consistency. It also underlies the generalised correspondence principle in physics. Now, consistency is heavily relied upon in the search for a new theory: quantum gravity (QG)....

79. Which principles should we follow when developing a quantum theory of gravity?

Astrid Eichhorn

27/03/2023, 14:00

In searching for a quantum theory of gravity, one may follow various different candidate principles. I will advocate for an approach based on the three principles
i) be conservative
ii) connect to experiment and
iii) go beyond research silos.
I will use research activities in asymptotically safe quantum gravity as an illustrative example.

48. Operational Theories as Structural Realism

Emily Adlam

28/03/2023, 09:00

In this talk I will introduce the operational theories approach to research in quantum foundations and undertake a reconstruction of the epistemic significance of this research. I argue that the space of operational theories is analogous to the space of possible worlds employed in the possible world semantics for modal logic, so research of this sort can be understood as probing modal...

49. Quantum computers and the future of quantum physics

David DiVincenzo

28/03/2023, 10:00

My main job is to make quantum computers (QCs) happen, and I will tell about that. QCs are very low energy machines, based on the premise that there are extremely accurate effective Lagrangians describing their domain. Trapped atom devices have been pretty successful for building QCs, and the atomic Lagrangian is indeed highly descriptive -- even considered ``fundamental" by some workers,...

78. Analyticity

Alexander Blum

28/03/2023, 14:00

I will give a historical overview of the various claims that (certain) physical quantities should be represented by analytic functions. I will show that there were two very distinct reasons for postulating such an “analyticity principle": (i) the expectation that (our representation of) the world should be both mathematically simple and infinitely smooth, an expectation that came to be...

74. tba

Andi Weiler

28/03/2023, 15:00

50. The Life Cycle of Scientific Principles

Enno Fischer (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)

29/03/2023, 09:00

Scientific principles are not static. As scientific inquiry proceeds, principles can go through a series of phases and processes, including a prehistory, a phase of elevation, and processes of formalization, generalization, and challenge. In this talk I will illustrate this ‘life cycle’ of scientific principles with a few examples from physics. I will also make some tentative suggestions as to...

77. *Prinzipienfuchser*. On Einstein's Use of Principles In Physics

Marco Giovanelli

29/03/2023, 10:00

Toward the end of 1919, in a two-column contribution for The Times of London, Einstein famously declared relativity theory to be a 'principle theory,' like thermodynamics, rather than a 'constructive theory,' like the kinetic theory of gases. In the last twenty years, this distinction has attracted considerable attention in both the historically- and the theoretically-oriented scholarship....