Each speaker has provided a list of readings related to the subject of their talk. The organizers also recommend the following general readings in the philosophy of science:
Godfrey-Smith, Peter: Theory and Reality.
Sober, Elliott: The Philosophy of Biology.
Curd, Martin and J. A. Cover: Philosophy of Science: The Central Issues.
Hans Reichenbach's work regarding causation has strongly influenced later research. Those interested in his views should consult:
Reichenbach, Hans: The Direction of Time.
Reichenbach, Hans: The Philosophy of Space and Time.
John Bragin is Executive Coordinator of Public and Continuing Education for UCLA’s Center for the Study of Evolution & the Origin of Life (CSEOL). Over the past decade he has designed, coordinated and often co-taught over 20 different public lecture series in such areas as the history of life on Earth, the origin and development of the universe, the history of medicine, evolutionary psychology, and the conceptual and cultural foundations of science. He has also conducted numerous in-service teacher-training workshops for secondary school science educators in the areas of evolution, paleontology and the use of computers to teach evolution and ecology to middle school and high school students. He was a co-founder of the CSEOL Computational Ecology & Evolution Group. Mr. Bragin’s science work has been published in PaleoBios and his science presentations include papers delivered at conferences of the Society for Literature and Science, CalPaleo and the HumanBehavior & Evolution Society. He is co-editor of the book-in-progress Questions of Scale: Size and Scope in Natural and Human-Made Systems. |
My talk will consider the role of causal notions in the development of physical theories, focusing on the case of gravitation. One of Newton's conceptual innovations was to develop an account of force that was not limited to mechanical action-by-contact. He recognized the empirical difficulties facing contemporary attempts to explain gravitation as the consequence of pressure exerted by a fluid, and instead gave a "mathematical account" of gravity. Leibniz took this to imply that Newton was either committed to treating gravity as a direct action-at-a-distance, or that he had failed to give a causal account of gravity. This debate sheds light on the sense in which forces of nature in Newton's system can be identified as causes, and I will also argue that Leibniz's insistence on action-by-contact does not seem well founded. Debates regarding the mystery of action-at-a-distance have persisted since the time of Newton and Leibniz. I will close by arguing that later attempts to give an account of the cause of gravity played almost no role in the formulation of a new gravitational theory by Einstein. Suggested Readings: Alexander, H. G. (ed): Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence (or the more recent edition by Roger Ariew). Chris Smeenk is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at UCLA. He received his PhD in the History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Pittsburgh in 2003 and joined the Philosophy Department at UCLA last year, following a one-year stint as a post-doctoral fellow at the Dibner Institute, MIT. His research interests include history and philosophy of modern physics (with a focus on relativistic cosmology, the topic of his dissertation), philosophy of science, and 17th century natural philosophy. He has published articles regarding philosophical issues in general relativity and cosmology, and he is an assistant editor of a forthcoming two-volume work on gravitational theory in the early twentieth century. |
There is no more complex issue in historical explanation than causation. Some historians shy away from even using the term. This paper will tread boldly and suggest ways in which the term can be used for phenomena as illusive as the metaphors “Scientific Revolution” and “Industrial Revolution”. It argues for a disaggregating of complex events in ways that permit patterns to be traced. Suggested Readings: Jacob, Margaret: Scientific Culture and the Making of the Industrial West. Margaret Jacob is a Professor of History at UCLA. She received her Ph.D. from Cornell in 1968. In 2002 she was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Utrecht and made a member of the American Philosophical Society and the Hollandse Maatschappij der Weterschappen. She has been visiting faculty at l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes and, recently, the University of Ulster. Her overriding intellectual concern has been with the meaning and impact of the Newtonian synthesis on religion, political ideology, industrial development and cultural practices. She has recently finished a book with Larry Stewart on the impact of Newton's science from the publication of the Principia in 1687 to the Great Exhibition in 1851. Along with Spencer Weart she edits a series aimed at making the history of science more accessible. Harvard University Press publishes it. When not researching she enjoys cooking. Currently, and continuing her on-going interest in the formation of civil society, she is writing Glimpses of the Cosmopolitan in Early Modern Europe. In 2004 she was University Research Lecturer at UCLA. |
Causation in classical mechanics is a rather thorny subject in that views have ranged everywhere from the claim that the notion of cause is an archaic one which has been replaced within physics by the notion of law (roughly Bertrand Russell’s view) to the view that there are no laws (at least no true laws) and causation is the fundamental notion (Nancy Cartwright’s view). In my talk, I will review the anti-causation stance and the anti-laws stance, and I will argue that they are both misguided via a review of various notions of causation that appear in classical physics and a discussion of how those notions relate to physical laws. In part, I will discuss various places that “causal conditions” arise within classical physics and I will describe how (for example) the condition of causal locality serves as a constraint upon laws. Suggested Readings: Cartwright, Nancy: How the Laws of Physics Lie. Sheldon Smith received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Ohio State University in 1998. After teaching for several years at Metropolitan State College of Denver, Sheldon came to UCLA in the Fall of 2003 where he is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy. Sheldon has worked primarily upon the notions of causation, physical law and the relation between the two as they have appeared in classical mechanics, but he has wide-ranging interests within philosophy and the philosophy of science. His articles have appeared in Philosophy of Science, The Monist, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, Synthese, and Erkenntnis. |
Causation in quantum mechanics is a puzzling business. At first one might suppose that the theory is necessarily stochastic and a-causal. But it turns out that quantum mechanics can be written in a deterministic form if one is willing to pay the conceptual costs involved. One of these costs is allowing for non-local causal relations. I will briefly explain how standard quantum mechanics works, then how Bohm's theory can make the same empirical predictions even though it is fully deterministic. We will also discuss how Bohm's theory allows for faster-than-light causation, but does not allow one to send faster-than-light signals. Suggested Readings: Albert, David: Quantum Mechanics and Experience. Jeff Barrett is an Associate Professor and the Chair of the Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science at UC Irvine. His primary research interests over the past ten years have concerned the conceptual structure of quantum mechanics. He has worked on the quantum measurement problem and on evaluating proposed solutions and has been particularly interested in the problems one encounters in constructing a satisfactory relativistic formulation of quantum mechanics. His publications include papers in Philosophy of Science, Synthese, Theory and Decision, and the Journal of Philosophical Logic. Dr Barrett’s research related to Everett's no-collapse (many-worlds) formulation of quantum mechanics led to the book The Quantum Mechanics of Minds and Worlds (Oxford University Press, 1999). |
Genic selectionism (ala Richard Dawkins's "selfish genes") holds that all selection can be understood as operating on particular genes. Critics (and conventional biological wisdom) insist that this misrepresents the actual causal structure of selective phenomena at higher levels of biological organization, but cannot convincingly defend this powerful intuition. I will argue that the real failing of genic selectionism is pragmatic: it prevents us from adopting the most efficient set of causal laws for the purposes of prediction and intervention. But I will also offer a pragmatic theory of causation itself which ultimately bears out the claim that genic selectionism misrepresents the causal structure of selective contexts. Suggested Readings: Dawkins, Richard: The Selfish Gene. P. Kyle Stanford is an Associate Professor in the Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science at the University of California, Irvine. His work appears in various publications, including The Journal of Philosophy, Erkenntnis, and Philosophy of Science. He has written on a variety of issues at the intersection of philosophy of science and evolutionary biology, including the nature of biological species and the units of selection. He is currently at work on a book examining the implications of the history of science for the status of contemporary scientific theories, entitled Exceeding Our Grasp: Science, History, and the Problem of Unconceived Alternatives (forthcoming with Oxford University Press). He spends most of his time at the moment, however, chasing his two-year old son, Casey. |
David Kaplan received his Ph.D. in philosophy from UCLA in 1964 after having received a B.A. in philosophy from UCLA in 1956 and one in mathematics in 1957. Since 1994, he has been the Hans Reichenbach Professor of Scientific Philosophy. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (elected l983), a fellow of the Institut International de Philosophie (l979) and a fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (1999). Several international conferences have been devoted to his work including "Themes from Kaplan in Palo Alto on March 18-21, 1984; David Kaplan's Contributions to Philosophy in San Marino on May 10-14, 2001; and David & His Many Students in the Fall of 2003 at UCLA. In 2000, he was named "Teacher of the Century" by UCLA Today. He received the Provost's Award for Innovation in Teaching with Technology in 2003, and in 2004 he received the campus-wide Distinguished Teaching Award. |