von Neumann celebrations

I think I might have mentioned before that von Neumann is a bit of a hero of mine.  I transferred my affections from Feynman as soon as I was old enough to realize how much exaggeration must be involved in the “Surely you’re joking” stories.  Sure, von Neumann may have made a mistake about hidden [...]

Foundations Summer School: Apply Now!

Just a short note to let you know that the application form for the Perimeter Institute Quantum Foundations Summer School is now available online from here. The application deadline is 20th May.
Update: I should have mentioned that for successful applicants who are grad students all expenses will be paid by Perimeter. That should [...]

Foundations at APS, take 2

It doesn’t seem that a year has gone by since I wrote about the first sessions on quantum foundations organized by the topical group on quantum information, concepts and computation at the APS March meeting. Nevertheless it has, and I am here in Denver after possibly the longest day of continuous sitting through talks [...]

Dates for your diary

Update: I am informed that the Oxford Everett meeting will be in the summer rather than in September and is invitation only.  Also, there will be a Symposium on the Foundations of Modern Physics in Vienna 7th-10th June.  Registration for that is open until the end of March.
I haven’t been contemplating too many quantum quandaries [...]

Conferences

Here’s what this year’s foundational conference calendar looks like at the moment:

November 2-5: PSA 2006, Vancouver, Canada. This is the Biennial meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association and there are a few sessions on quantum theory.
November 28 – December 3: QCMC 2006, Tsukuba, Japan.  This is really a quantum information, computation and optics meeting, [...]

Vaxjo Meeting

I returned this weekend from the meeting on Foundations of Probability and Physics at the University of Vaxjo in Sweden. There were many interesting talks, so I'll just mention a few of them that I found particularly inspiring.
- Giacomo Mauro d'Ariano explained his axiomatization of quantum theory, inspired by observations from quantum state and [...]

Foundations Spring/Summer 2006

Here’s my list of the highlights of the conference season for foundations this year:

March 24th-25th: Boston Colloquium for Philosopny of Science – Boston University.

Foundations [...]

Foundations at APS

I’m currently at the APS March Meeting, where there were two sessions on Quantum Foundations on Monday. I am pleased to report that they were well attended. Hopefully, this marks the start of an increased involvement of the APS in the field.
The second session was particularly interesting, so here’s a short summary of [...]

Support the APS topical group

As you may know, the American Physical Society has recently opened a topical group on Quantum Information, Concepts and Compuation, which covers the foundations of quantum mechanics within its remit (under the “concepts” heading I suppose).  There will be a special session on the Foundations of Quantum Theory at the APS March Meeting in Baltimore [...]