Details

Title: Dealing with Time and Chance
Confirmed speakers: David Wallace, Sean Carroll, Max Heitmann, Wayne Myrvold, Nina Emery, Emily Adlam, Tim Maudlin and Alison Fernandes.
Lead Discussants: David Albert, Jill North, Ted Sider, with opening remarks by Barry Loewer.
Dates: 22-23 June 2026
Time: 10.00am-5.00pm each day
Location: Monday: Old Physics Theatre, UCD Newman House (Museum of Literature Ireland). Tuesday: Neil Lecture Theatre, Trinity Long Room Hub, TCD.
Cost: Free - registration required

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Overview

A striking phenomenon runs through nature and everyday experience: many processes are directed differently towards the past than towards the future. We remember the past, but not the future. Causes are in the past, effects in the future. The ‘entropy’ of the universe increases over time. Time seems to have a direction. yet the laws of nature are, by and large, temporally symmetric, taking the same form in both directions in time.

Can the range of temporal asymmetries we see be explained using the posits of physics? How are these posits to be understood? Could a ‘low-entropy’ constraint on the universe be a law? Can there be probabilities if the laws of the universe turn out to be deterministic?

These are the questions at the heart of David Albert's 'Time and Chance' (2000), concerning the physics and philosophy of the direction of time, the metaphysics of chance and the foundations of statistical mechanics. 

Organisers

Alison Fernandes (Trinity College Dublin), Barry Loewer (Rutgers University), Ye-Eun Jeong (Columbia University), Daniel Deasy (University College Dublin), under the auspices of the Irish Society for the Philosophy of Time.

Registration

For registration, please email Ye-Eun Jeong (Columbia University) at  yj2540@columbia.edu. While there is no registration fee, registration is required as places are limited. 

Further information

Please see the event website for further details.

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