History and Philosophy of Science
Eötvös Loránd University,
Budapest
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Research projects |
| Philosophy of Science |
| Research on
Forms of Knowledge (different forms of knowledge, their foundations, shared
and different characteristics)
György Kampis
Gábor Kutrovátz
Miklós Rédei
László Ropolyi
Gábor Szabó
László E. Szabó
Péter Szegedi
András Szigeti
Miklós Zágoni
Gábor Zemplén
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The aim of the project is to study the problem of different forms of
knowledge, first of all to analyse the modern forms and functions of knowledge.
In the course of the research of the subject it will be also the part of
our task to answer such fundamental questions as the relationships of knowledge
and idea, knowledge and belief, knowledge and supposition, as the everyday
and scientific, the non-value based and ideological, the personal and impersonal
forms of knowledge, the connection of the eternal and “hic et nunc”, objective
and subjective, structured and amorphous, universal and particular concerns
of knowledge. The main large categories will be the characterisation of
scientific knowledge as well as the description of the relationship of
scientific and non-scientific knowledge.
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| History and Philosophy of Physics |
Von Neumann
Project
Miklós Rédei
Michael Stoeltzner
László E. Szabó
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| The aim of the Von Neumann Project is to do and coordinate philosophically
motivated historical research on John von Neumann, the Hungarian born mathematician
(1903-1957).
During the first phase of the project (1997-2000) the research focussed
on von Neumann's activity in the area of foundations of quantum physics.
This phase of the Project was coordinated by M. Stoeltzner (Institute
Vienna Circle, Vienna, Austria) and M. Rédei (Department of
History and Philosophy of Science (HPS), Eötvös University, Budapest,
Hungary), and was funded by the Aktion Oesterreich-Ungarn, by the
Hungarian National Science Foundation (OTKA) and by the Austrian Science
and Liaison Office of the Austrian Institute of Eastern and South Eastern
European Studies.  As
part of the project a two day international workshop
was held in the HPS Department in Budapest in February 1999. The lectures
delivered by the participants of the workshop were based on expert essays
analyzing different areas of von Neumann's work on foundations of quantum
mechanics. The essays have been published in the first part of a volume
entitled John von Neumann and the Foundations of Quantum Physics, click
ref. [1] for the details of the book.
The second part of this volume contains hitherto unpublished documents
related to von Neumann and works by him; among these works are the typescript
of his "Unsolved problems in mathematics" (Address to the International
Congress of Mathematicians, Amsterdam, September 2-9, 1954) (see [2] describing
von Neumann's talk and its historical context), and von Neumann's
unpublished manuscript "Quantum mechanics of infinite systems". These
unpublished works were located by M. Rédei during an archival search
of the Library of Congress (Washington, D.C., U.S.A.) while he was staying
in the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology (MIT,
Cambridge, U.S.A.) in the academic year 1997-1998 as a Senior Resident
Fellow.
The second phase of the project (2001-2003) aims at editing and publishing
a volume of selected letters by von Neumann, this phase is supported by
a research grant from OTKA (principal investigator: M. Rédei). For
further works related to von Neumann's activity in the area of foundations
of quantum theory see [3 ] and [4].
Related Publications
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John von Neumann
and the Foundations of Quantum Physics, M. Rédei and M. Stoeltzner,
eds., (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001)
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M. Rédei: Mathematical
Intelligencer 21 (1999) 7-12.
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M. Rédei: "Why von
Neumann did not like the Hilbert space formalism of quantum mechanics (and
what he liked instead) Studies in the History and Philosophy of Modern
Physics 27 (1996) 493-510.
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M. Rédei: "Mathematical
physics and philosophy of physics (with special regard to J. von Neumann's
work)" (in HOPOS 2000, M. Heidelberger, ed., (Kluwer Academic Publishers,
forthcoming)
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M. Rédei: "John von Neumann's concept of quantum logic and quantum
probability" in [1].
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L. E. Szabó:
"Critical reflections on quantum probability theory", in [1].
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Research on Reichenbach's
Common Cause Principle and Stochastic Causality
Balázs Gyenis
Gábor Hofer-Szabó
Ferenc Huoranszki
Miklós Rédei
László E. Szabó
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