Workshop “Effective Metaphysics” (Aix-Marseille University, June 15-16, 2027)
Analytic metaphysics has often been concerned with questions about the fundamental structure of reality: what the world is ultimately made of and how everything else depends upon them. For naturalistically informed metaphysics, however, this raises a difficulty: since we do not yet have a final theory of physics, how can metaphysical inquiry proceed? In high-energy physics, there has been a shift toward thinking of theories as effective; valid only within limited energy levels without requiring a complete account of the underlying fundamental physics. This workshop asks whether there might be an analogous approach to metaphysics. Can we develop substantive metaphysical accounts of non-fundamental domains, structures, or dependence relations while remaining agnostic about the ultimate structure of reality? The workshop will explore possible approaches to “effective metaphysics” from across metaphysics and philosophy of science, while also inviting critical perspectives on the coherence, scope, and limitations of such a programme.
More information available soon.
Workshop “Autonomy and Its Limits” (LMU Munich, May 20-22, 2027)
Autonomy is a multi-faceted concept that features inter alia in the notions of autonomous systems and autonomous descriptions. It is increasingly recognized as central to such topics as emergence, levels of description, effective theories, the unity of science, etc. This workshop presents new work on autonomy in the contexts of condensed matter physics, particle physics, cosmology, quantum gravity, and the special sciences.
More information available soon.
Workshop “Postwar Physics Across Scales” (LMU Munich, April 9-10, 2026)
The development of theoretical physics after 1945 has been marked by an increased attempt to both study physical systems “scale by scale” in some independent fashion and build models that could potentially work across all scales. This workshop aims to engage with conceptual aspects of this transformation. In particular, we will give a close look at the set of methods, models, theories, mechanisms and principles that physicists have devised to articulate hierarchies of scales and unify them (e.g., renormalization and renormalization group methods, effective field theories, thermal field theories, grand unified theories, symmetry breaking mechanisms, new unifying symmetries, new approximation methods).
More information is available here.
April 9
9:00 – 10:15
Alexander Blum: “Beyond Power Counting: On the Historical Connection Between Renormalizability and Gauge Symmetry”
10:30 – 11:45
Victoria Zwierzyk-Teles: “The Symmetries That Were Broken”
11:45 – 13:00
Rocco Gaudenzi: “Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking Across Scales: From Physics to Life and Brain”
14:15 – 15:30
Adam Koberinski: “Particle Physics Across Temperature Scales”
15:30 – 16:45
Sébastien Rivat: “The Evolution of Steven Weinberg’s Conception of Effective Field Theories in the 1970s”
17:00 – 18:15
Robert van Leeuwen: “The “Problem of Gauge Hierarchies” in Early Unification Physics”
April 10
9:00 – 10:15
John Dougherty: “The Background of Batalin–Vilkovisky Quantization”
10:30 – 11:45
Francisco Caldéron: ““Profound Results from Not-very-profound Properties”: The Renormalization-group Route to Asymptotic Freedom”
11:45 – 13:00
Vincenzo Nespeca: “A Brief History of Asymptotic Safety”
14:15 – 15:30
Emilia Margoni: “Cluster Transfer: The Renormalization Group Case”
15:30 – 16:45
James Fraser: “The Many Faces of the Renormalization Group”
Venue:
LMU Munich
Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1
Room M 210 (CEPP library)
Workshop on the History and Philosophy of Quantum Field Theory (LMU Munich, June 26, 2025)
The workshop is intended to address recent issues in the history and philosophy of quantum field theory at the occasion of Michael Miller’s visit from the University of Toronto (June 23 – June 29, 2025). The event will take place from 9:00 to 18:00.
More information is available here.
Program:
9:00 – 10:15
Alexander Blum (MPIWG/MCMP, LMU Munich) “Should we worry about the renormalization constants being infinite? Julian Schwinger and his school on the UV behavior of QED, 1953-1965”
10:30 – 11:45
Sébastien Rivat (MCMP, LMU Munich): “Unifying the non-fundamental: Steve Weinberg’s early path toward effective theories (1957-1965)”
13:45 – 15:00
James Fraser (IHPST, Paris): “Perspectives on the divergence of perturbation theory”
15:15 – 16:30
John Dougherty (MCMP, LMU Munich): “What is the philosophical problem with gauge theories?”
16:45 – 18:00
Michael Miller (Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto): “Epistemic and semantic effective realism”
Venue:
LMU Munich
Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1
Room M 210 (CEPP library)
