University of Pittsburgh · School
of Arts and Sciences
Department of
History and Philosophy of Science
John Earman
University Professor (Adj. Philosophy). Before coming to Pittsburgh, he taught at UCLA, The Rockefeller University, and the University of Minnesota. He is the author of A Primer on Determinism; World Enough and Spacetime: Absolute vs. Relational Theories of Space and Time; Bayes or Bust: A Critical Examination of Bayesian Confirmation Theory; and Bangs, Crunches, Hume's Abject Failure: The Argument Against Miracles , Whimpers and Shrieks: Singularities and Acausalities in Relativistic Spacetimes. His research centers on the history, methodology, and foundations of modern physics.
Books
A Primer on Determinism , University of Western Ontario Series in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 32 (D. Reidel, 1986).
World Enough and Space-Time: Absolute vs. Relational Theories of Space and Time (MIT Press/Bradford Books, 1989).
Bayes or Bust? A Critical Examination of Bayesian Confirmation Theory (MIT Press/Bradford Books, 1992).
Bangs, Crunches, Whimpers, and Shrieks: Singularities and Acausalities in Relativistic Spacetimes (Oxford University Press, 1995).
Hume's Abject Failure: The Argument Against Miracles (Oxford University Press, 2000).
Recent Books Edited
Ceteris Paribus Laws (co-edited with C. Glymour and S. Mitchell) (Kluwer, 2003)
Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. Philosophy of Physics (co-edited with J. Butterfield) (Elsevier-North Holland, 2007).
Recent Articles
"Pre-Socratic Quantum Gravity," (with G. Belot), in C. Callender and N. Huggett (eds.), Physics Meets Philosophy at the Planck Scale (Cambridge University Press, 2001).
"Lambda: The Constant That Would Not Die," Archive for History of Exact Sciences 55 (2001): 189-220.
"Bayes, Hume, Price and Miracles," Proceedings of the British
Academy 113 (2002): 91-109.
"Weyling the Time Away: The Non-Unitary Implementability of Quantum
Field Dynamics on Curved Spacetime" (with A. Arageorgis and Laura
Ruetsche), Studies in the History and Philosophy of Modern Physics
33 (2002): 151 184.
"Thoroughly Modern McTaggart. Or What McTaggart Would Have Said If He Had Learned General Relativity Theory," Philosophers Imprint 2 (2002). http://www.philosophersimprint.org/ (This is a refereed on-line journal.)
"What Time Reversal Invariance Is and Why It Matters," International Journal for the Philosophy of Science 16 (2002): 245-264.
"Gauge Matters," in J. A. Barrett and J. McKenzie Alexander (eds.), PSA 2000, Part II (S209 S220).
"Editorial" (with C. Glymour and S. Mitchell), special issue of Erkenntnis on ceteris paribus laws, 57 (2002):277-280.
"Ceteris Paribus Lost" (with J. Roberts and S. Smith), Erkenntnis 57 (2002): 281-301.
"Fulling Non-Uniqueness and the Unruh Effect: A Primer on Quantum Field Theory" (with A. Arageorgis and L. Ruetsche), Philosophy of Science 70 (2003): 164-202.
"The Cosmological Constant, The Fate of the Universe, Unimodular Gravity, and All That," Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 34 (2003): 559-577.
"Tracking down gauge: an ode to the constrained Hamiltonian formalism," in K. Brading and E. Castellani (eds.), Symmetries in Physics: Philosophical Reflections (Cambridge University Press, 2003).
"Rough guide to spontaneous symmetry breaking," in K. Brading and E. Castellani (eds.), Symmetries in Physics: Philosophical Reflections (Cambridge University Press, 2003).
"Determinism: What We Have Learned and What We Still Don't Know," in J. K. Campbell, M. O=Rourke, and D. Shier (eds), Determinism, Freedom, and Agency (MIT Press, 2004).
"Time Machines" (with C. Wüthrich), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/time-machine/
"Curie's Principle and Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking," International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 18 (2004): 173-198.
"Laws, Symmetry, and Symmetry Breaking; Invariance, Conservation Principles, and Objectivity," Philosophy of Science 71 (2004): 1227-1241.
"Relativistic Invariance and Modal Interpretations" (with Laura Ruetsche), Philosophy of Science 72 (2005): 557-583.
"Contact with the Nomic: A Challenge for Deniers of Humean Supervenience about Laws of Nature. Part I: Humean Supervenience" (with John Roberts), Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 71 (2005): 1-22.
"Contact with the Nomic: A Challenge for Deniers of Humean Supervenience about Laws of Nature. Part II: The Epistemological Argument for Humean Supervenience" (with John Roberts), Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 71 (2005): 253-286.
"Two Challenges to the Requirement of Substantive General Covariance," Synthese 148 (2006): 443-468.
"Haag's Theorem and Its Implication for Quantum Field Theory" (with Doreen Fraser), Erkenntnis 64 (2006): 305-344.
"The Implications of General Covariance for the Ontology and Ideology of Spacetime," in D. Dieks (ed.), The Ontology of Spacetime. Philosophy and Foundations of Physics Series, Vol. 1 (Elsevier, 2006).
"The 'Past Hypothesis': Not Even False," Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 37 (2006): 399-430.
"In the Beginning, At the End, and All in Between: Cosmological Aspects of Time," F. Stadler and M. Stöltzner (eds.), Time and History: Proceedings of the 28th International Ludwig Wittgenstein Symposium (Ontos-Verlag, 2006).
"Aspects of Determinism in Modern Physics" in J. Butterfield and J. Earman (eds.), Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. Philosophy of Physics (Elsevier, 2007).
"Self-Adjointness: Implications for Determinism and the Classical-Quantum Correspondence," Synthese, forthcoming.
Journal Positions
Editorial Boards of Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics and Physics in Perspective.
Works in Progress
"Do the Laws of Physics Forbid the Operation of a Time Machine?" (with Christopher Smeenk).
"The Emperor's New Theory: The Semantic/Models View of Theories."
"Sharpening the Electromagnetic Arrow(s) of Time."
"Pruning Some Branches from 'Branching Spacetimes'."
"Models for an Evolving Block Universe."