Quantum gravity is supposed to be the most fundamental theory, including a quantum theory of the metrical field (spacetime). However, it is not clear how a quantum theory of gravity could account for classical phenomena, including notably measurement outcomes. But all the evidence that we have for a physical theory is based on measurement outcomes. We consider this problem in the framework of canonical quantum gravity, pointing out a dilemma: all the available accounts that admit classical phenomena presuppose entities with (...) a well-defined spatio-temporal localization (“local beables” in John Bell's terms) as primitive. But there seems to be no possibility to include such primitives in canonical quantum gravity. However, if one does not do so, it is not clear how entities that are supposed to be ontologically prior to spacetime could give rise to entities that then are spatio-temporally localized. (shrink)

Today, Thomas White (1593–1676) is remembered as the leader of the “Blackloists” – a renegade Catholic group that took its name from White's sometime pseudonym “Blacklo” – and as the friend and phi...

This thesis examines the evolution of cosmology in the first half of the seventeenth century through a case study of the erudite Alessandro Tassoni and his Pensieri diversi, an encylopedia covering scientific, literary, historical, and philosophical topics. Highly successful during the seventeenth century, read even by Galileo Galilei, the Pensieri diversi has received little scholarly attention. However, it offers a significant contribution to our understanding of the evolution of early modern cosmology because it was published during the early seventeenth century (...) when profound changes in representations of the structure of the cosmos were occurring. Specifically, it sheds light on scientific debates in the decades immediately preceding Galileo’s Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo. With his Pensieri diversi, Tassoni facilitated the dissemination of scientific disputes across a wider public of erudite non-specialists by using an easy-to-read question and answer format. Yet, he did not simply reproduce opinions from late medieval thought and contemporaneous cosmological debates but instead offered his own critique. I analyse three key themes from the Pensieri diversi. These topics open up more nuanced understanding of those complex issues that, over time, led to epistemological changes in the field of the history of science. In order to point out Tassoni’s contribution to the science of early seventeenth century, I set his scientific and philosophical speculations in their historical and sociological context, and I also provide close textual and theoretical analysis of Tassoni’s cosmological ideas. Thus, I address, more generally, the relationship between scientific and scholarly culture at the dawn of the Scientific Revolution. (shrink)