Location: Kane Hall, Room 210

O'Hara Philosophy of Physics Lecture Series

Title: "How physics flew the philosophers' nest”

Katherine Brading
Professor of Philosophy
Duke University
Trinity College of Arts and Sciences

Abstract:
Physics and philosophy are today housed in separate departments and, by and large, practiced by different people. Physics is – or at least seems to be – largely independent of philosophy. It was not always thus. And, contrary to popular opinion, the “Scientific Revolution” of the 17th century is not when the two went their separate ways. So when, how, and why did physics fly the philosophers’ nest? How, and to what extent, did physics gain its autonomy? And with what consequences? This is a big story, and to find our way we’ll follow one thread that runs throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, engaging “philosophers” such as Descartes, Leibniz, Du Châtelet and Kant, and “physicists” such as Newton, Huygens, Euler, and d’Alembert, alike. All puzzled over the same issue: how do bodies (inanimate, animate, or even human) act on one another?