Contact: a.e.ferreirodeguiar[AT]uu.nlLocation: Utrecht, The Netherlands
The COSMO-MASTER team and UPAC group are organising a two-day conference on the conceptual dichotomy between spacetime and matter, taking place in Utrecht (NL) on the 1st and 2nd of September 2025. This conference will be directly followed by the Utrecht Philosophy of Astronomy and Cosmology (UPAC) conference (3-5 Sept). We welcome physicists, philosophers, and anyone else who may be interested, to submit an abstract or register as a participant (registration opening in the spring).
In Newtonian physics, there is a strict conceptual dichotomy between space(time) and matter, in the sense that all ingredients of a Newtonian ontology are either purely space(time), (the “container”), or purely matter (that what is “contained”). Such a mutually exclusive categorisation starts to blur once we consider the metric in general relativity, an entity that is typically introduced as representing spacetime, but which also exhibits various paradigmatic features of being matter, such as being dynamical, reacting when being acted upon, and (controversially) carrying energy.
Various entities in modern astronomy and cosmology (e.g. dark matter, dark energy, black holes, inflation) similarly resist the old Newtonian mold. The concepts of spacetime and matter further degrade once entering the regime of quantum gravity. Understanding these conceptual categories affects both model building in physics, as well as various philosophical debates, e.g. substantivalism versus relationalism about spacetime. This conference scrutinises the tenability of a rigid dichotomy between spacetime and matter, and the consequences of a breakdown of these Newtonian goggles.
Possible topics include but are not limited to:
gravitational energy
black holes, dark matter, dark energy, inflation and the spacetime-matter split
the relationship between spacetime functionalism and matter (functionalism)
conventionalism
the spacetime-matter split in quantum gravity
supersymmetry and superspace
the spacetime-matter split and the substantivalism-relationalism debate
the spacetime-matter split and the debate between the geometrical and dynamical account of spacetime
the spacetime-matter split and scientific realism
spin-2 gravity vs general relativity
the container metaphor
(hybrid) model building in astronomy and cosmology
Confirmed keynote speakers:
Domenico Giulini (Hannover)
James Read (Oxford)
Kian Salimkhani (Nijmegen)
Proposals for contributed presentations should be submitted to cosmo-master@uu.nl by the 25th of April 2025 as a pdf, and should consist of a title, an extended abstract of 300-500 words (excluding bibliography), and a short one-paragraph narrative CV that describes your research profile and includes your current affiliation (if any). Presenters are expected to be present at the in-person conference. We hope to have (a small amount of) funding available towards travel costs for student speakers. We expect to have selected contributing speakers by the first week of May.