The lecture is available now for pre-screening at:  https://youtu.be/0ifiBrYk4XM

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Questions will be answered at live virtual Q&A on May 20, 2021 after the lecture screening. The zoom link will be sent to all registrants.

How Physics Flew The Philosophers’ Nest
Katherine Brading, Professor of Philosophy, Duke University

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?