Prof Harvey R Brown

Professor of Philosophy of Physics
Fellow of Wolfson College

harvey.brown@philosophy.ox.ac.uk

Philosophy Centre
10 Merton Street
Oxford OX1 4JJ, UK.

Research Interests

The foundations of quantum mechanics, relativity theory and thermal physics; the philosophy of space and time, the role of symmetry principles in physics, and aspects of climate change science.

Education and career

1968-1971	BSc (Hons) Physics, University of Canterbury (NZ)
1971-1978	PhD, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Chelsea College, University of London
1978-1984	Assistant Professor in Department of Philosophy, São Paulo State University at Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil.
1984-	University Lecturer in Philosophy of Physics, Oxford University (Reader 1996, Professor 2006)

My current CV is avaiable here (PDF format)

Recent Publications

‘Curious and sublime: the connection between uncertainty and probability in physics’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 369, 1–15 (2011). doi:10.1098/rsta.2011.0075

Christopher G. Timpson and H.R.B., ‘Building with quantum correlations’, Quantum Information Processing 9 (2), 307-320 (2010).

‘Comment on Valentini, “De Broglie-Bohm Pilot-Wave Theory: Many Worlds in Denial?” in Many Worlds? Everett, Quantum Theory and Reality, (Eds.) S. Saunders, J. Barrett, A. Kent, D. Wallace, Oxford University Press, 2010, pp. 510-517. arXiv:0901.1278v1 [quant-ph].

H.R.B, Wayne Myrvold and Jos Uffink, ‘Boltzmann’s H-theorem, its discontents, and the birth of statistical mechanics’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 40, 174–191 (2009).

Physical Relativity: Space-time Structure from a Dynamical Perspective, Oxford University Press. Paperback edition October 2007.

H.R.B. and Christopher G. Timpson, ‘Why special relativity should not be a template for a fundamental reformulation of quantum mechanics’, in Physical Theory and Its Interpretation: Essays in Honor of Jeffrey Bub, W. Demopoulos, I. Pitowsky (eds.), Springer, 2006; pp. 29-41. arXiv:quant-ph/0601182.

H.R.B. and O. Pooley, ‘Minkowski space-time: a glorious non-entity’; in The Ontology of Spacetime, Dennis Dieks (ed.), Elsevier B. V., 2006; pp. 67-89. An earlier version is found in arXiv: physics/0403088 and PITT-PHIL-SCI 1661.

H.R.B. and David Wallace, ‘Solving the measurement problem: de Broglie-Bohm loses out to Everett’, Foundations of Physics 35, 517-540 (2005) quant-ph/0403094; PITT-PHIL-SCI 1659.

‘Einstein’s misgivings about his 1905 formulation of special relativity’, European Journal of Physics 26, S85—S90 (2005) (special Einstein issue).

Christopher G. Timpson and H.R.B., ‘Proper and Improper Separability’; International Journal of Quantum Information 3 (4), 679–690 (2005); quant-ph/0402094.

H.R.B. and Peter Holland, “Dynamical vs. variational symmetries: Understanding Noether’s first theorem”, Molecular Physics 102, (11-12 Spec. Iss), 1133-1139 (2004). PITT-PHIL-SCI 2194.

H.R.B. and Peter Holland, ‘Simple applications of Noether’s first theorem in quantum mechanics and electromagnetism’, American Journal of Physics 72 (1), 34-39 (2004). Quant-ph/0302062.

K. Brading and H.R.B. “Gauge symmetry transformations observed?”, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 55, 645-665 (2004). PITT-PHIL-SCI 1436.