Strange beautiful grass of green: LMU Summer 2021 “Metaphysical Problems of Physics”

Most of the required and suggested readings are available online in the course’s shared Dropbox folder. Contact Dr. Curiel to get access to the folder.

R. Carnap, “Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology” (Supplement A in his Meaning and Necessity, second ed.)
R. Carnap, “The Methodological Character of Theoretical Concepts” (in Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. 1, 1956)
R. Carnap, Philosophical Foundations of Physics: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science
E. Curiel, On Learning Philosophy, unpublished manuscript
E. Curiel, The Constraints General Relativity Places on Physicalist Accounts of Causality Theoria, 2000, 15(1):33–58
E. Curiel, On the Existence of Spacetime Structure, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 2016, doi:10.1093/bjps/axw014 (ABSTRACT); there are technical appendices of the paper working out the details of some of the constructions and arguments and supplementing some of the philosophical discussion, which limitations of space did not allow for inclusion of in the published version
E. Curiel, What Can It Mean to Ask, Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?, manuscript prepared for presentation at the symposium “Understanding Our Place in the Universe: Beyond the Legacy of Stephen Hawking” organized by the John Templeton Foundation, Mishkenot Sha’ananim Conference Center, Jerusalem, 17–19 March 2019
E. Curiel, Schematizing the Observer and the Epistemic Content of Theories, forthcoming in Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics (special issue “The Philosophy of Howard Stein”), 2020 (ABSTRACT). What appears in this version as §5 (“What Measurements and the Observer Are”) and §11 (“Appendix: Précis”), will not appear in the published version due to length constraints; otherwise the two versions are identical (except for trivialities noted in the text).
E. Curiel, Kinematics, Dynamics, and the Structure of Physical Theory (unpublished manuscript)
E. Curiel, Why Rigid Designation Cannot Stand on Scientific Ground (unpublished manuscript)
J. Earman, A Primer on Determinism
J. Earman, World Enough and Space-Time: Absolute versus Relational Theories of Space and Time
E. Fermi, Thermodynamics
R. Feynman, Lectures on Physics, 1.12, “Characteristics of Force”
R. Feynman, Lectures on Physics, 1.52, “Symmetry in Physical Laws”
R. Feynman, The Character of Physical Law, MIT Press, 2001
R. Geroch, General Relativity from A to B, University of Chicago Press, 1978
R. Geroch, Mathematical Physics, University of Chicago Press, 1985
J. W. Gibbs, Elementary Principles of Statistical Mechanics, Developed with Especial Reference to the Rational Foundation of Thermodynamics
W. Harper, R. Stalnaker and G. Pearce (eds.), Ifs: Conditionals, Belief, Decision, Chance, and Time, The University of Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science, vol. 15, 1981
H. v. Helmholtz, “Preface” to Principles of Mechanics by H. Hertz (translated by D. Jones and T. Walley, no copyright)
H. Hertz, “Author’s Preface” and “Introduction” to his Principles of Mechanics (translated by D. Jones and T. Walley, no copyright)
S. Martin, “Philosophy, Religion and College” (from his album A Wild and Crazy Guy)
J. C. Maxwell, Matter and Motion, No copyright.
J. C. Maxwell, The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell, Volume 1, a reprint of the original Cambridge University Press edition of 1890.
J. C. Maxwell, The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell, Volume 2, a reprint of the original Cambridge University Press edition of 1890.
J. C. Maxwell, Theory of Heat, London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1904. With corrections by Lord Rayleigh. No copyright.
I. Newton, “De Gravitatione et Æquipondio Fluidorum” (selected passages; translation and interpolated commentary by Howard Stein)
R. Nozick, Invariances: The Structure of the Objective World, Harvard University Press, 2001
C. S. Peirce, The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings, Volume 2 (1893--1913), edited by The Peirce Edition Project, Indiana University Press, 1992 [EPUB]
H. Poincaré, Science and Hypothesis (beautiful PDF produced by The Gutenberg Project from the 1905 edition from Walter Scott Publishing Co., Ltd.; no copyright)
H. Putnam, Mind, Language and Reality: Philosophical Papers, Volume 2, Cambridge University Press, 1975
B. Russell, “On the Notion of Cause”
G. Smith, “Closing the Loop“, in Newton and Empiricism, eds. Z. Biener and E. Schliesser, Oxford University Press, 2014, ch. 10, pp. 262–351
H. Stein, “On Metaphysics and Method in Newton” (unpublished manuscript)
H. Stein, “Further Considerations on Newton’s Method” (unpublished manuscript)
H. Stein, “How Does Physics Bear upon Metaphysics; and Why Did Plato Hold That Philosophy Cannot Be Written Down?” (unpublished manuscript, first typeset with minor corrections by Erik Curiel and Tom Pashby in March 2019, now incorporating Stein’s handwritten corrections and additions from May 2020; the March 2019 version can be found H. Stein, here; a scan of the original typed manuscript, given to Curiel by Stein in 1996, can be found H. Stein, here)
H. Stein, “Physics and Philosophy Meet: the Strange Case of Poincaré” (unpublished manuscript)
H. Stein, “Newtonian Space-Time”, Texas Quarterly 10(1967):174–200.
H. Stein, “On the Notion of Field in Newton, Maxwell, and Beyond” in R. Stuewer (ed.), Historical and Philosophical Perspective of Science (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1970), pp. 264–287. Includes comments by G. Buchdahl and M. Hesse, and replies by Stein.
H. Stein, “On the Conceptual Structure of Quantum Mechanics”, in Paradigms and Paradoxes: The Philosophical Challenge of the Quantum Domain, ed. Robert Colodny (University of Pittsburgh Series in the Philosophy of Science, vol. V; Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1972), pp. 367–438.
H. Stein, “‘Subtler Forms of Matter’ in the Period Following Maxwell”, in G. Cantor and M. Hodge (eds.), Conceptions of Ether: Studies in the History of Ether Theories, 1740–1900, Cambridge University Press, 1981
H. Stein, “On the Present State of the Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics”, PSA 1982, vol. 2, pp. 563–581
H. Stein, “After the Baltimore Lectures: Some Philosophical Remarks on the Subsequent Development of Physics”, in Kelvin’s Baltimore Lectures and Modern Theoretical Physics, ed. Robert Kargon and Peter Achinstein (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987), pp. 375–398
H. Stein, “Yes, but …: Some Skeptical Remarks on Realism and Anti-realism”, Dialectica, 1989, 43:47–65
H. Stein, “On Locke, ‘the Great Huygenius, and the Incomparable Mr. Newton’”, Philosophical Perspectives on Newtonian Science, eds. P. Bricker and R. Hughes, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 1990.
H. Stein, “Was Carnap Entirely Wrong, After All?”, Synthese, 1992, 93:275–295.
H. Stein, “Some Reflections on the Structure of Our Knowledge in Physics”, in eds. Prawitz, D. and B. Skyrms and D. Westerståhl, Logic, Metholodogy and Philosophy of Science, New York: Elsevier Science B.V., 1994, 633–655. Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science
H. Stein, “The Enterprise of Understanding and the Enterprise of Knowledge”, Synthese, 2004, 140:135–176
P. Suppes, Studies in the Methodology and Foundations of Science: Selected Papers from 1951 to 1969 (Springer, 1969)
P. Suppes, Models and Methods in the Philosophy of Science: Selected Essays (Springer, 1993)
C. Truesdell, The Tragicomical History of Thermodynamics: 1822–1854, Springer-Verlag, 1980