• The Foundations of Physics @Harvard series is co-sponsored by the Department of Philosophy
• Seminar talks are generally 1 hour each, followed by 1 hour for questions
• You can visit the YouTube channel here

Questions or comments: Jacob Barandes, firstname_lastname(at)harvard.edu (organizer)

• “On Functional Freedom and Penrose’s Critiques of String Theory” (April 30, 2024)
– James Read (Oxford)

• “Not the Measurement Problem’s Problem: Black Hole Information Loss with Schrödinger’s Cat” (April 16, 2024)
– Saakshi Dulani (Johns Hopkins)

• “On Playing Gods: The Fallacy of the Many-Worlds Interpretation” (April 2, 2024)
– Luis Cortés Barbado (IQOQI Vienna)

• “Center Indifference and Skepticism” (February 20, 2024)
– David Builes (Princeton)

• “Updates to the Second Law from Quantum Thermodynamics” (February 13, 2024)
– Nicole Yunger Halpern (NIST, Joint Center for QI and CS, Maryland)

• “Laplace Meets Gödel” (January 16, 2024)
– Jenann Ismael (Johns Hopkins)

• “Conquering Mount Everett: Branch-Counting Versus the Born Rule” (November 14, 2023)
– Jake Khawaja (Princeton)

• “Insights into Quantum Time Reversal from the Classical Schrödinger Equation” (October 31, 2023)
– Craig Callender (UCSD)

• “Spacetimes with Torsion” (October 17, 2023)
– Helen Meskhidze (Harvard)

• “Cosmic Acceleration as a Quantum Effect” (October 3, 2023)
– Ward Struyve (KU Leuven)

• “Measurement Dependence and Nonlocality” (September 19, 2023)
– Guido Bacciagaluppi (Utrecht University)

• “A Tale of Two Sciences, Both Called ‘Thermodynamics’ ” (May 3, 2023)
– Wayne Myrvold (The University of Western Ontario)

• “A New Formulation of Quantum Theory” (April 12, 2023)
– Jacob Barandes (Harvard University)

 • “Intrinsic Quantum Mechanics” (March 29, 2023)
– Neil Dewar (University of Cambridge)

• “What Breathes Fire in the Equations?” (March 8, 2023)
– Barry Loewer (Rutgers University)

• “Naturalism, Functionalism and the Metaphysics of Science” (February 22, 2023)
– Alison Fernandes (Trinity College Dublin)

• “The Simplicity of Physical Laws” (December 13, 2022)
– Eddy Keming Chen (University of California, San Diego)

• “Centering the Everett Interpretation” (November 29, 2022)
– Isaac Wilhelm (National University of Singapore)

• “On the Status of Quantum Tunnelling Time” (November 15, 2022)
– Grace Field (University of Cambridge)

• “Do First-Class Constraints Generate Gauge Transformations? A Geometric Perspective” (November 1, 2022)
– Clara Bradley (University of California, Irvine)

• “The Time in Thermal Time” (October 4, 2022)
– Eugene Chua (University of California, San Diego)

• “The Common Logical Structure of Classical and Quantum Mechanics (and All Scientific Theories)” (September 20, 2022)
– Gabriele Carcassi (University of Michigan)

• “Laws of Nature as Constraints” (September 6, 2022)
– Emily Adlam (Rotman Institute and Western University)

• “Bayesian Epistemology in a Quantum World” (August 23, 2022)
– Alexander Meehan (Yale University)

• “Interpreting Toy Theories, With an Application to Symmetries” (August 9, 2022)
– David Baker (University of Michigan)

• “The Disappearance and Reappearance of Potential Energy in Classical and Quantum Electrodynamics” (July 26, 2022)
– Chip Sebens (California Institute of Technology)

• Mini-Workshop on the Quantum Measurement Problem (June 29, 2021)
– Lev Vaidman (Tel Aviv University): “The Measurement Problem and its Solution in the Framework of the Many-Worlds Interpretation”
– Vanessa Seifert (University of Bristol): “The Measurement Problem as a Solution to Chemical Problems”
– David Chalmers (New York University), Kelvin McQueen (Chapman University): “Consciousness and the Collapse of the Wave Function”

• Mini-Workshop on QBism and the Interpretation of Quantum Theory (May 25, 2021)
– Christopher Fuchs (University of Massachusetts Boston): “QBism and the Philosophers”
– Jacques Pienaar (University of Massachusetts Boston): “Challenges to Defining a QBist Ontology”
– Chris Timpson (Oxford): “QBism, Ontology, and Explanation”

• Mini-Workshop on Infinities and Idealizations (April 27, 2021)
– Patricia Palacios (Salzburg): “The Paradox of Infinite Limits: A Realist Response”
– Elay Shech (Auburn): “Scientific Understanding, Modal Reasoning, and (Infinite) Idealization”
– Samuel Fletcher (Minnesota): “Emergence, Explanation, and (Infinite) Idealization”

• Mini-Workshop on Naturalness and Renormalization (March 30, 2021)
– Arianna Borrelli (Leuphana University Lüneburg): “An Argument for All Seasons: Naturalness and the Hierarchy Problem as Flexible Heuristic Tools in High Energy Physics”
– Alexander Franklin (King’s College London): “Emergence, Autonomy, and Naturalness”
– Joshua Rosaler (RWTH Aachen University): “Dogmas of Effective Field Theory: Fundamental Parameters, Scheme Dependence, and the Many Faces of the Higgs Naturalness Principle”

• Mini-Workshop on Structural Realism (February 16, 2021)
– James Ladyman (Bristol): “What is Ontic Structural Realism?”
– Kerry McKenzie (UCSD): “Structuralism as a Stance”
– Emily Adlam (Western Ontario): “Generalized Probabilistic Theories as Structural Realism”

• Mini-Workshop on Black Holes (January 19, 2021)
– Erik Curiel (LMU Munich): “Singularities in Classical and Semi-Classical Gravity—Theory Failure or New Physics?”
– Mina Himwich (Harvard): “Illuminating Black Holes”
– Lydia Patton (Virginia Tech): “Theories and Parameters: Building a Testing Framework for Black Hole Astronomy”

• Mini-Workshop on Probability and Undecidability (December 15, 2020)
– Snow Xueyin Zhang (Princeton): “The Borel-Kolmogorov Paradox as a Paradox for Physical Chance”
– Klaas Landsman (Radboud University Nijmegen): “Determinism and Undecidability: You Can’t Eat Your Cake and Have it Too”
– Markus Müller (Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information): “The Room in the Elephant: From Undecidability as Undifferentiation to Physics Without a World”

• Mini-Workshop on the History of Quantum Foundations (November 17, 2020)
– Adam Becker: “ ‘Not Merely False, but Foolish’: The History of Bell’s Two Theorems”
– Elise Crull (CCNY): “Grete Hermann’s Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics”
– Chris Mitsch (UC Irvine): “Von Neumann’s Axiomatic Completion of Quantum Mechanics”

• Mini-Workshop on Causation (October 22, 2020)
– Holly Andersen (Simon Fraser): “Causation is to Information as Work is to Energy”
– Matthew Leifer (Chapman): “Block Universe Ontological Models:  A Framework for Theories with Retrocausality”
– Eric Cavalcanti (Griffith): “Implications of Wigner’s Friend Paradox for Quantum Causality”

• Mini-Workshop on the Foundations of Spacetime (September 22, 2020)
– Alyssa Ney (UC Davis): “From Quantum Entanglement to Spatiotemporal Distance”
– Eleanor Knox (King’s College London): “How to be a Spacetime Functionalist”
– Karen Crowther (Oslo): “Principles of Quantum Gravity”

• Mini-Workshop on the Many Worlds of Everettian Quantum Theory (August 18, 2020)
– Sean Carroll (Caltech): “Mad-Dog Everettianism”
– David Albert (Columbia): “Worries About Accounts of Probability in Everettian Understandings of Quantum Mechanics”

• Mini-Workshop on the Foundations of Thermodynamics (July 15, 2020)
– Orly Shenker (Hebrew University of Jerusalem): “Is Everything Physical? The Entropy of Computation and the Computational Theory of Mind”
– Katie Robertson (Birmingham): “In Search of the Holy Grail: How to Reduce the Second Law of Thermodynamics”
– Eddy Keming Chen (UC San Diego): “Nomic Vagueness, the Past Hypothesis, and Time’s Arrow in a Quantum Universe”

• Mini-Workshop on the Meaning of the Wave Function (June 15, 2020)
– Valia Allori (Northern Illinois): “The Wavefunction is as the Wavefunction Does”
– David Wallace (Pittsburgh): “A Critique of Wave-Function Realism”
– Nina Emery (Mount Holyoke and UMass Amherst): “The Governing Conception of the Wavefunction”

• Mini-Workshop on the Foundations of Quantum Field Theory (May 15, 2020)
– Chip Sebens (Caltech): “Electron Spin and Field Quantization”
– Jacob Barandes (Harvard): “How Quantum or Field-Theoretic is Quantum Field Theory?”
– Noel Swanson (Delaware): “CPT, Spin-Statistics, and Non-Causal Explanation”