Events

Title: What Einstein thought about Singularities

Abstract: Einstein’s treatment of spacetime singularities is now viewed as haphazard and even ill-informed. Contrary to that view, I shall argue that his treatment fitted with a consistent program of research that privileged physical requirements and analytic expressions over geometric constructions, which he regarded as defeasible and of purely heuristic value.

Bio: John D. Norton was born and grew up in Sydney, Australia. He studied chemical engineering at the University of New South Wales (1971-74) and then worked for two years as a technologist at the Shell Oil Refinery in Clyde, Sydney. He then switched fields and began a doctoral program in the School of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of New South Wales (1978-1981), with a dissertation on the history of general relativity.
He then came to Pittsburgh as a visitor to the Center for Philosophy of Science/visiting faculty member in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. He has been in the Department of HPS ever since, and promoted to full professor in 1997, served as Chair in 2000-2005, and was promoted to Distinguished Professor in 2014. He served as the Director of the Center for Philosophy of Science, from September 2005 to August 2016.

Monday, October 16, 2023 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM