Jeremy Butterfield
I am a Senior Research Fellow at
Most of my papers from recent years
can be found at the 'Los
Alamos archive' (look under 'physics',
'quant-ph' and 'gr-qc'),
or at the 'Pittsburgh
Philosophy of Science archive'. A list of publications is here.
For links and more resources, go to: the Cambridge Quantum Information
website, and the Oxford
Philosophy of Physics website.
My best e-mail address is: jb56@cam.ac.uk
This webpage was last updated on 14 July 2007
Some Recent and Forthcoming Papers
Click on the following, to download as ps or pdf files.
‘On Symplectic Reduction in Classical Mechanics’, in J. Earman and JNB(eds.) TheHandbook of Philosophy of Physics, North Holland 2006; 1 - 131. Available
at: physics/0507194
and at http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00002373/
‘On Symmetries and Conserved Quantities in Classical Mechanics’, in W. Demopoulos and I. Pitowsky (eds.), Physical Theory and its Interpretation, Springer 2006; 43 - 99; Available at: physics/0507192 and at http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00002362/
‘Against Pointillisme in Geometry’,
in F. Stadler,
M. Stoeltzner (eds.), Time and History;
‘Against Pointillisme in Mechanics’,
British
Journal for the Philosophy of
http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0512064.
'The
Rotating Discs Argument Defeated', British
Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 57, 2006, 1-45; http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00002382
'On
the Persistence of Particles', in Foundations of
Physics, 35, 2005, 233-269;
http://www.arxiv.org/abs/physics/0401112;
and http://philsci-archvie.pitt.edu/archive/00001586
‘On the Persistence of Homogeneous Matter’, Los Alamos: physics/0406021: Pittsburgh: http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001760/
‘Between Laws and Models: Some Philosophical Morals of Lagrangian Mechanics’, Available at: Los Alamos physics/0409030 and Pittsburgh http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001937/
'David Lewis Meets Hamilton and Jacobi', in Philosophy of Science, 71, 2004, 1095-1106; http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001191/.
'Some Aspects of Modality in Analytical Mechanics', in P. Weingartner and M. Stoeltzner (eds), Formale Teleologie und Kausalitat in der Physik, Mentis 2004, 160-198. Available at: http://www.arxiv.org/abs/physics/0210081 and http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001192
'On
Hamilton-Jacobi
Theory as a Classical Root of Theory', in A. Elitzur,
S. Dolev and N. Kolenda
(eds.), Quo Vadis
Quantum Mechanics?, Springer
2004, 239-273; Los
Alamos archive: quant-ph/0210140 and http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001193
‘Topos Theory as a Framework for Partial Truth’, in P. Gardenfors, K. Kijania-Placek and J. Wolenski (ed.s), In the Scope of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science (volume 1), Kluwer Academic, 2002; 307-329; http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00000192/
‘Some Worlds of Quantum Theory ’, in R.Russell, J. Polkinghorne et al (ed.), Quantum Mechanics (Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action vol 5), Vatican Observatory Publications, 2002; 111-140. Los Alamos archive: quant-ph/0105052; Pittsburgh: 00000204.
‘The End of Time?’, in British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 53, 2002, 289-330 (Ostensibly a review of J. Barbour, The End of Time, this is in effect a survey of some Machian themes in dynamics); Los Alamos archive: gr-qc/0103055; Pittsburgh: 00000104
'The
State of Physics: Halfway through the Woods', The
Journal of Soft
Computing, 5, 2001, 129-130.
'Quantum
Curiosities of Psychophysics', in Consciousness and
Human Identity,
ed. J. Cornwell,
Some Recent and
Forthcoming Book Reviews
Decoherence and the Appearance of a Classical
World in Quantum Theory
by
E.
Joos, H.D. Zeh et al.
in Philosophy of Science and Quantum Mechanics and its Emergent
Macrophysics
by G. Sewell, Philosophy of Science, 72, 2005,
395-399.
Alternative
Logics: Do Sciences Need Them?,
Paul Weingartner (ed.),
in Contemporary Physics,
46, 2005, 57-58
'Relativistic
Quantum Mechanics', by Hartmut M. Pilkuhn in Contemporary
Physics, 45, 2004, 89.
'Quantum
Dialogue: the Making of a Revolution',
by Mara Beller, in Contemporary
Physics, 43,
2002, 230-231.
'Quantum
Chance and Nonlocality',
by W.M. Dickson,in Philosophy
of Science 68,
2001, 263-266.
'The
Quantum Mechanics of Minds and Worlds',
by J. Barrett, in European Journal of Philosophy 9,
2001, 230-233.
'The
Philosophy of Physics',
by R. Torretti, in Physics
in Perspective, volume 4, 2000.
'The
Modal Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics',
D. Dieks and P. Vermaas
eds., in Metascience
9, 2000, 489-494.
Some Recent
Lecture Courses
The
Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence
The
first part
of
this course (given in 2000), Part
A,
introduces the philosophy of
geometry and motion. The second part, Part
B,
first gives a potted history of
conceptions of space prior to the Correspondence; and then discusses
two recent
interpretations of
The Philosophy of Thermal Physics
This course (given in 2000), available here, discusses the philosophical aspects of: first thermodynamics, and then statistical mechanics. The reading list is a separate file. (Again: the diagrams are missing: one day ...)