"Matter", i.e. *that* which underlies bodies, has been a recurrent theme of philosophical and scientific thought through the centuries: from the natural philosophy of the Ancient Greeks, to Western and Arabic medieval theories of matter, to the oscillation between corpuscular and field conceptions of matter in the modern period, all the way to the myriad notions of matter that are so fruitfully deployed in contemporary scientific theories such as condensed matter physics, relativity and quantum mechanics. The goal of this interdisciplinary conference is to bring together experts from the History and Philosophy of Science and the History of Philosophy to unpack diverse concepts of matter in various traditions/periods, to articulate the intellectual concerns to which they are responsive, and to explore the family resemblances as well as the discontinuities between different concepts of matter.
This is a closed event.
Originally published at rome.nd.edu.