Abstracts

• Why Matter Is a Principle of Disorder: Matter in the Platonist Tradition (George Karamanolis)

  University of Vienna, Austria

  Responding to the description of the receptacle in Plato’s Timaeus as a principle without form (amorphon, 54a7), Platonists from very early on postulated a principle, sometimes known as the Dyad, responsible for the material nature of the world and also for disorder in the world. Later on, guided by the Aristotelian identification of the receptacle with matter (Physics 192a9–16, 209b11–13), they considered matter a principle of disorder, qualityless and even evil. In my talk, I will concentrate on the sense in which matter is a principle of disorder for Platonists. Unlike Aristotle, Platonists are interested not only in the potentiality of matter to receive the Forms, but also in its potentiality to lose them. This is the case because matter for the Platonists is incapable of receiving the Forms properly, and in this sense is responsible for the change and corruption of bodies. If the Forms contribute to order and stability, matter contributes to the opposite. It is this issue and its consequences that I will address in my talk.

• Matter and Change: Aristotle, His Commentators, and His Critics (Riccardo Chiaradonna)

  Università Roma Tre, Italy

  In my paper I will outline some aspects of Aristotle’s account of matter and natural movement (Phys. I). In particular, I will focus on Aristotle’s view that matter is the substratum of movement, and as such is different from privation. This idea is closely connected to his view that movement has a transient status and is directed toward an end outside itself. I will also consider some ancient interpretations of this theory, especially Plotinus’s critical reading according to which matter is identical with privation, there is no permanent substratum of movement, and physical movement is not directed toward any external goal.

• Matter, Motion, and Quantity from the Late Renaissance to Early Modernity (Silvia Manzo)

  Universidad Nacional de La Plata/IdHICS-CONICET, Argentina

  In this presentation, I explore some questions on matter that were central during the transition from the late Renaissance to early modernity. I focus on the views of two important figures in this transition process: Francis Bacon and René Descartes. First, I address the question of the activity or inactivity of matter, which is directly related to the explanation of the origin of motion. Second, I set out the different ways in which the quantification of matter began to be introduced as part of the mathematization of nature. These two interrelated issues will allow us to attend to the articulation between theoretical knowledge and practical application, at a key historical moment that shaped a model of technological dominion over nature—with negative and positive consequences for nature and humanity right up to the present day. 

• Fixity No More: Superposition, Neutrino Oscillations, and Other Quantum Matters (David Kaiser)

  Department of Physics and Program in Science, Technology, and Society
  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  One of the strangest features of quantum mechanics is known as “superposition,” the idea that objects can exist in two or more states simultaneously, epitomized by Erwin Schrödinger’s live-and-dead cat. Quantum superposition appears to be difficult to reconcile with ancient ideas about atomism, as well as with more recent ideas about the behavior of matter: not only do atoms consist of smaller parts (hence they are not indivisible), but those parts need not have fixed or constant identities over time. In this talk I will describe my group’s recent analysis of the oscillations of neutrinos—tiny, subatomic particles that interact very weakly with ordinary matter—as the particles traveled from Fermilab, near Chicago, to enormous underground detectors in northern Minnesota, 735 kilometers away. The experimental data are not consistent with any description in which each individual neutrino is assumed to have a definite identity at each moment in time. Rather, the data strongly favor the quantum-mechanical description, according to which each particle completed its long journey in a superposition, having no definite identity en route. This test represents one of the longest distances over which quantum theory has been tested to date.

• Searching for New Elementary Particles and Forces with Quantum Fluctuations (Andrzej J. Buras)

  TUM Institute for Advanced Study

  Even after the completion of the Standard Model of Particle Physics (SM) through the discovery of the Higgs Boson in 2012, physicists are still anticipating the discovery of new particles, either directly with the help of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN or indirectly through quantum fluctuations causing certain rare processes to occur at different rates than predicted by the SM. Although the latter route is very challenging, requiring very precise theory and experiment, it permits a much higher resolution of short distance scales than is possible with the help of the LHC. In fact, there is a good chance that we may achieve an insight into scales as short as 10^{-21} m (Zeptouniverse), corresponding to an energy scale of 200 TeV. In my presentation, the main strategies for reaching this goal will be explained in simple terms. I will summarize the present status of deviations from SM predictions and list prime candidates for new particles responsible for these apparent anomalies, then give a short outlook for coming years.