Shows
MCMP – Philosophy of PhysicsIn Favour of a Schrödinger Evolution of the UniverseSean Gryb (Radboud) gives a talk at the Workshop on the Problem of Time in Perspective (3-4 July, 2015) titled "In Favour of a Schrödinger Evolution of the Universe". Abstract: In the canonical formulation of reparametrization invariant systems, time evolution on phase space is generated by a fully constrained Hamiltonian. On the orthodoxy view, the quantum formalism for such systems is constructed through Dirac quantization, which leads to a real, time-independent constraint on the quantum state. The question then remains how to extract a notion of time evolution from this frozen formalism. On one predominant view, the system is to b...2015-07-0900 minMCMP – Philosophy of PhysicsBarbour's Shape Space as an Ontology for GravitySean Gryb (Radboud) gives a talk in the colloquium "Journeys in Platonia: Celebrating 50 Years Since The End of Time" at the 17th UK and European Meeting on the Foundations of Physics (29-31 July, 2013) titled "Barbour's Shape Space as an Ontology for Gravity". Abstract: I will give a personal account of the development of the conformally invariant version of ‘Shape Dynamics’. The story will be told from three perspectives: i) a historical one, highlighting the role of College Farm and the unique interactions with Julian Barbour, ii) a philosophical one, describing a simple observation about the meaning of local scale in phys...2013-11-0600 min