Professor Markus Müller joined Western University in 2015 as an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Applied Mathematics and Philosophy. He also holds a Canada Research Chair in the Foundations of Physics at Western. In addition, Dr. Müller is an associate faculty member at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo. His work addresses [...]
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 [...]
