Zu Chongzhi Mathematics Research Seminar

Date and Time (China standard time): Wednesday, June 12, 11:00 am-12:00 pm

Location: WDR 1007

Title: From Plato to Galileo: are the laws of nature mathematical in nature?

Speaker: Christos Efthymiopoulos

Abstract: 

A famous statement of Galileo, which stands at the foundations of the modern scientific revolution, regards the ‘book of nature’, whose pages narrate the ‘natural laws’, and which is written in the ‘language of mathematics’. The seminar will discuss Galileo’s statement as a statement about the ontological nature of physical laws. Namely, we will argue that Galileo’s statement actually represents a Platonic viewpoint, one in which the natural laws have ‘existence’ on their own merit, and constitute a  fundamental part of the ontological reality of the world which surrounds us. We will discuss the reasons why Galileo’s viewpoint had a fundamental impact in the uprise of modern scientific revolution. Finally, we will refer to the great battle between the ontological, on one hand, and the so-called ‘epistemic’, on the other, understanding of the nature of physical laws, inquiring why the latter should be regarded as an almost immediate consequence of the human battle to compromise our everyday cognitive experience with the requirements of the quantum-mechanical interpretation of our world.

Bio: 

Christos Efthymiopoulos is currently Associate Professor at the Department of Mathematics Tullio Levi-Civita of the University of Padova. Before moving to Italy, he served for 17 years (2003-2019) as research staff at the Research Center for Astronomy and Applied Mathematics of the Academy of Athens, in Greece, being Research Director since 2011. His Research focuses on methods of perturbation theory, as well as its applications in nonlinear dynamical systems, focusing on systems of interest in dynamical astronomy and in quantum mechanics. He is author of more than 80 articles in scientific journals and he has been invited speaker in more than 20 international conferences on topics of dynamical systems and celestial mechanics.