Dear all, Just a reminder that the Serious Metaphysics Group meets this evening between 5.30 - 7.00pm in the Philosophy Faculty board room.
Our speaker is Karen Crowther on "Effective Spacetime" (see attached email for abstract). I look forward to seeing many of you there! Best wishes, Matthew Simpson On 09-10-2013 10:32, M. Simpson wrote: > Dear all, > > The first meeting of the Serious Metaphysics Group will take place > next Wednesday, 16th October, between 5.30 - 7.00pm in the Philosophy > Faculty board room. > > Our first speaker is Karen Crowther on "Effective Spacetime" (abstract > below). > > The termcard for Michaelmas 2013 is on the SMG website at > http://www2.phil.cam.ac.uk/news_events/metaphysics.html > > Whilst there are no more spaces in Michaelmas, if you're interested in > speaking in Lent or Easter term please get in touch, as the spaces are > filling up quickly! > > I look forward to seeing many of you on the 16th. > > Best wishes, > > Matthew Simpson > > > > Karen Crowther - Effective Spacetime. > > Analogue models of gravity are useful for replicating > general-relativistic phenomena “on the lab bench” (most recently, the > gravitational lensing of light around stars has been re-created on a > microchip! > http://www.nature.com/news/curved-space-time-on-a-chip-1.13840 ). Some > of these models (though not the chip) also present us with concrete > examples of emergent spacetime, which is of interest in the quest for > a quantum theory of gravity – they demonstrate how a curved spacetime > might “emerge’’ from some more fundamental structures “beyond’’. In > these cases, spacetime is described by an effective theory: a theory > that is supposed to be valid only at a given energy (or length) scale. > I explore the conception of emergence that is applicable to condensed > matter analogues of general relativity (which also relates to > emergence in the framework of effective field theory more generally) > arguing that it is best understood without appeal to the idea of > reduction or the usual philosophical categories of ontological- and > epistemological-emergence. I finish by briefly mentioning some > potential implications for quantum gravity. -- Matthew Simpson PhD Student in Philosophy University of Cambridge Mail: Robinson College, Cambridge, CB3 9AN _____________________________________________________ Sent by the CamPhilEvents mailing list. To unsubscribe or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents Posts are archived here: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive
