............Time and Universe, 2009

 Announcements

  What is tau?

tau-related news

Grant history

Workshop Papers

Links

 
 NB: Having apparently exhausted our funding opportunities from SSHRC, we are now in the process of reformulating the Cluster. The changes in personnel are reflected on this page. The co-principals would be interested to hear suggestions as to how this project might be able to find funding to continue. In the meantime we will be going into a kind of hibernation. But I (RTWA) will continue to monitor this website and bring items of interest to the attention of TaU members.
 What is tau?


is a cluster of researchers interested in philosophical problems arising in the context of formulating a theory of Quantum Gravity.
The project came into existence as a result of a Cluster Design Grant competition instigated by SSHRC in 2004. It is based in Canada, and involves collaborators from Canada, the United States, England, the Netherlands, Italy, France, New Zealand and Australia.
 
After winning from SSHRC a Cluster Design Grant grant in 2005 and an Interim Funding Grant in 2006, as well as receiving funding from the Universities of British Columbia, Western Ontario and McMaster, we have held 3 workshops (Montreal, June 2006, Vancouver, May 2007, and Montreal, June 2008), and sponsored the LECTURE SERIES in 2006, a series of lectures given by Professor Harvey Brown of Oxford University in several Canadian cities.
 
This cluster has the dual aims of
  • assisting cosmologists in making progress on the so far intractable problems concerning time in the search for a viable theory of Quantum Gravity
  • providing a public forum for explanation and discussion of the exciting new ideas concerning time that are broached in modern cosmology.

Who are we?

  •  The co-principals of tau are:
 
Steven Savitt (Philosophy, University of British Columbia)
Richard Arthur (Philosophy, McMaster University)
Wayne Myrvold (Philosophy, University of Western Ontario)
William Unruh (Physics, University of British Columbia).

 

For the latest on tau, see "tau-related news" page.

  • the other participants in tau are:
    Gordon Belot (Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh), Harvey Brown (History and Philosophy of Science, Oxford University), Jeremy Butterfield (All Souls College, Oxford University), Craig Callender (Philosophy, UCSD), Saurya Das (Physics, University of Lethbridge), Dennis Dieks (Foundations and Philosophy of the Natural Sciences, Utrecht), Robert DiSalle (Philosophy, University of Western Ontario), Mauro Dorato (Philosophy, University of Rome III), Heather Dyke (Philosophy, University of Otago), John Earman (Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh), Doreen Fraser (Philosophy, University of Waterloo), Robert Geroch (University of Chicago), Richard Healey (Philosophy, University of Arizona), Storrs McCall (Philosophy, McGill University), Joshua Mozersky (Philosophy, Queens University), Jonathan Oppenheim (Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge), Kent Peacock (Philosophy, University of Lethbridge), Vesselin Petkov (Philosophy, Concordia), Oliver Pooley, Faculty of Philosophy, Oxford University), Huw Price (Centre for Time at the University of Sydney), Carlo Rovelli (Centre de Physique Théorique de Luminy, Marseilles), Simon Saunders (History and Philosophy of Science, Oxford University), Lee Smolin (Physics, Perimeter Institute, Waterloo), Gerard 't Hooft, Institute for Theoretical Physics, Utrecht), Antony Valentini (Physics, Centre de Physique Théorique de Luminy, Université de la Méditerranée, Marseilles), Andrew Wayne (Philosophy, University of Guelph), Steven Weinstein (Philosophy, University of Waterloo), Christian Wüthrich (Philosophy, UCSD).


Links to Affiliated Organizations

 
Centre for Time, University of Sydney
International Sociey for the Advanced Study of Spacetime
Oxford Philosophy of Physics website
ESF Network for Philosophical and foundational problems of modern physics
The Origins Institute at McMaster University



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This page last updated January 26th, 2009

© Richard T. W. Arthur, 2005-09