21 April 2015

This summer semester, the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy (MCMP) is organizing a reading group in philosophy of physics focused on Renormalization Group Methods (RG). RG methods have played an important role in the theory of fundamental interactions at the microscopic scale and the theory of continuous macroscopic phase transitions. Apart from their importance in physics, RG methods have been regarded as a crucial case to look at in the philosophical debates about reduction, emergence, explanation and the role of idealizations and models in physics. The reading group aims to explore these and other related debates by discussing physical and philosophical papers. The idea is to discuss RG methods not only as they are used in the theory of phase transitions but also in QFT and Quantum Gravity.

The group’s meetings will usually be every two weeks, starting from Tuesday 21st April. All sessions will take place in E210, Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1 from 16:00 to 18:00. The reading for the first session is M. E. Fisher “Renormalization group theory: Its basis and formulation in statistical physics”.