Here's the sixth lecture from the Rotman Summer Institute on Foundations of Statistical Mechanics from July 14-20, 2013. Lots more to come. In this lecture Albert discusses the problems arising from the fact that classical statistical mechanics assumes the time-reversal symmetric Newtonian dynamics. Albert begins with a discussion of how the evolutions of microscopic states [...]
Here's the fifth lecture from the Rotman Summer Institute on Foundations of Statistical Mechanics from July 14-20, 2013. Lots more to come. In this lecture, John Norton presents an analysis of how Einstein came to the argument for light behaving in some contexts as quanta, which Einstein himself calls a "very revolutionary" argument among his [...]
Here's the fourth lecture from the Rotman Summer Institute on Foundations of Statistical Mechanics from July 14-20, 2013. Lots more to come. In this lecture, Jos Uffink continues his earlier discussion of some of the prehistory of the kinetic theory of gases and statistical mechanics. First, Uffink discusses precursors to the kinetic theory of gases, [...]
Here's the third lecture from the Rotman Summer Institute on Foundations of Statistical Mechanics from July 14-20, 2013. Lots more to come. In this lecture, David Wallace discusses statistical mechanics and its machinery. As he notes, it's easy to get the impression, from looking at philosophical and foundational literature on statistical mechanics, that the primary [...]
Here's the second lecture from the Rotman Summer Institute on Foundations of Statistical Mechanics from July 14-20, 2013. Lots more to come. This is the first of three lectures in which Jos Uffink provides a discussion of the development and historical foundations of thermodynamics. This first lecture covers the prehistory, beginning with a discussion of [...]
This is the first lecture from the Rotman Summer Institute on Foundations of Statistical Mechanics from July 14-20, 2013. More will follow at the rate of approximately one per week. In this introductory lecture, Wayne Myrvold discusses thermodynamics. He introduces the theory without presupposing the molecular theory of matter or that thermodynamic systems can be [...]
We are beginning to realize that weare more lost than we previously thought. -Harry Martinson, Aniara 13. It is somewhat surprising that two of my favorite books, one being von Wright’s Vetenskapen och förnuftet and the other the Nobel laureate Harry Martinson’s Aniara, both have a very negative view of the future of humankind. Aniara [...]
Von Wright (right) with Wittgenstein. Most of my intellectual development growing up was through books. I read basically anything I could get my hands on. Books were more important to me than school and I never paid much attention to school until I arrived at Uppsala University in 1992. I was there, after considerable disagreement [...]
Image by Mark Smith from Nature, Feb 1st, 2012. In some alternative health publications, the suggestion that sugar is a toxic substance would not be a news story, but when you start suggesting in Nature that sugar should be taxed and regulated like tobacco and alcohol - eyebrows raise. Drs. Robert H. Lustig, Laura [...]
In September 2011, Yann Benétreau-Dupin arrived at Western to pursue his PhD in Philosophy. Yann was one of the two recipients of the Rotman Institute of Philosophy Doctoral Entrance Scholarship, a $10,000 scholarship offered to students of with outstanding performance history and achievements, and who specialize in the study of philosophy and science. In October, [...]