Quantum Investigations

This workshop explores philosophical and historical questions in the foundations of quantum theory: from Bohr to Wheeler; from Complementarity to Mysticism; from Quantum Biology to the Physics of Information.

Please email karim.thebault@bristol.ac.uk to register.

22nd March 2025, G2 Cotham House, University of Bristol, 29 Cotham Hill, Bristol BS6 6JL

Programme

09:30 – 10:15: Guido Bacciagaluppi (Utrecht): Better than Bohr? Grete Hermann’s Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics

10:15 – 11:00: Ray Pedersen (Oxford) and Jer Steeger (Bristol): Complementarity as infringement

11:00 — 11:30 Coffee

11:30 – 12:15:  Noah Stemeroff (Bristol): Baptised Anti-Metaphysical? Pauli and Heisenberg’s Later Mysticism 

12:15 – 13:30 Lunch

13:30 – 14:15: Noemi Bolzonetti and Mor Lumbroso (Utrecht):  The Eye as an Optical Instrument – Bohr, Physiology and the Gamma Ray Microscope

14:15 – 15:00: Margarida Hermida (Bristol & King’s College London): Philosophy of Quantum Biology

15:00 – 15:30: Coffee

15:30 – 16:15: Stefano Furlan (Utrecht): Beyond the End of Time – Prolegomena to ‘It from Bit’

16:15 – 17:00: Dean Rickles (Sydney): Why Your Cosmos Needs You: John Wheeler and the Physics of Information

This workshop is associated with the Bristol Centre for Science and Philosophy, two Bristol Benjamin Meaker Distinguished Visiting Professorships and the ERC project Niels Bohr for the 21st Century