Philosophy of Physics Seminar (Thursday - Week 2, HT24)
Thursday 25 January, 3pm
Lecture Room, Radcliffe Humanities
Caspar Jacobs (Leiden): 'Stating Maths-First Realism, or: How to Say Things with Models’
The aim of philosophy of physics, broadly speaking, is to interpret physical theories. Since those theories are expressed mathematically, this means either extracting meaning from their mathematical models or endowing those models with meaning. The traditional means by which we interpret theories is language. But there seems to be a mismatch between the content of those models and that of their linguistic interpretations; hence the desire to avoid linguistic means in the process interpretation altogether. Wallace’s ‘maths-first realism’ is a recent expression of this desire. It is still unclear, however, how mathematical models can mean anything in the absence of a linguistically-provided interpretation. In this talk I will survey a range of options and their complications. I will conclude that if language-free interpretation is possible at all, it would radically alter the face of philosophy of physics.
With speaker’s consent, talks will be recorded and published on YouTube. Our channel is:
