Symmetry Group - Seminar 2025

This research seminar series is organised by Baptiste Le Bihan and Christian Wüthrich.

Note that the format is sometimes pre-read, sometimes presentation, and sometimes both.

Further Information here! 

cancelled

Maria Nørgaard

Quantum systems do persist

Despite the development of several formal accounts of persistence in recent years, only a handful of articles have been dedicated to investigating the persistence in quantum mechanics. Since the locative turn, persistence has been defined in terms of exact location – a locative notion that does not readily map onto quantum formalism. Efforts to adapt the traditional locative framework to quantum settings have produced discrete quantum paths, which are difficult to reconcile with locational accounts of persistence and cast doubt on whether quantum systems persist at all. This paper introduces an alternative approach to quantum persistence, replacing exact location with a graded locative notion tailored to quantum mechanics: quantum location. The framework permits continuous quantum trajectories, overcoming the issues faced by the traditional account and making it compatible with quantum analogues of both locational endurantist and perdurantist accounts of persistence – on the quantum location approach, quantum systems do persist. The paper suggests that quantum persistence requires a reevaluation of traditional metaphysical tools, advocating for an adaptable framework that can reconcile both quantum formalism and metaphysical concepts.

Lorenzo Cocco

Pythagoreanism

Call `Pythagoreanism' the view that some mathematical objects are not abstract, but concrete and physical.   I want to investigate this and a related view about properties and quantities. I give three arguments for Pythagoreanism so construed. The pragmatic argument says that intertwining a physical and a mathematical ontology gives us the simplest and most convenient linguistic framework for science. The parsimony argument says that, if we reconstruct our theories axiomatically, we see that Pythagorean formulations demand fewer independent postulates and primitive notions than their rivals. The third and final argument is that the main rival of Pythagoreanism, which I will call the representationalist view of the role of mathematical objects in physics, is in deep trouble in fundamental physics. The format is both pre-read and presentation. Please find the paper attached and the abstract below

Lorenzo Lorenzetti

Separatism and unitism about spacetime

Charlotte Zito

Quantum gravity: no spacetime, no laws?

Enrico Cinti and Baptiste Le Bihan

No parts, no wholes

Arthur Saraiva

Bundle theory and quantum mechanics

Elisa Ballabio

TBA

Niels Linnemann

TBA

Enrico Cinti

TBA

Matěj Krátký

TBA

Annica Vieser

TBA

Special programme

TBA