Managing editor Foundations of Physics
“An international journal devoted to the conceptual bases and fundamental theories of modern physics and cosmology”
What is the Philosophy of Physics?
Book about relativity: Physics to Philosophy and Back
– A Search for the Limits of Physics (World Scientific publ.; Dec 2024)
About this blog
In Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice through the looking glass’, Alice says the following to her royal hostess, the White Queen:
Alice: ‘one can’t believe impossible things.’ Queen: ‘I daresay you haven’t had much practice, when I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.’
This blog is an attempt to induce in the reader the fundamental yet not unpleasant sense of doubt that Alice must have felt during her conversation with the White Queen. Perhaps the reader will not start believing in impossible things, but I hope my writings will inspire further thought about the matters discussed. The blog is not intended as a collection of answers to more or less difficult questions. Often the questions presented have no clear answers – or they have several (depending on whom you ask). The blog is intended to show which philosophical questions I find especially fascinating and intriguing.
About me
My name is a paradox in the flesh (and since I am my name in the flesh, I am squarely a paradox in the flesh). My first name, Fedde, is of a heathen Germanic origin; whereas my last name, Benedictus, is as catholic as, well, 16 of the previous popes.
In 2010 I finished my physics studies at the University of Utrecht (the Netherlands). Right after that I started a pilot-study in archaeology. The aim of this study was to determine the feasibility of applying Social Network Analysis to the rise of Christianity in the early Roman Empire. It turned out that such application is not feasible. Instead of following up on the archaeological pilot-study, I took a deep breath and dived headfirst into the rabbit hole: I did a PhD in the history/philosophy of physics/mathematics.
In a sense, starting this blog was a collateral of that PhD. The blog gave me the chance to write about topics not very closely related to my research – whether they were to end up in my PhD-thesis or not. I defended my PhD-thesis in 2017. Currently I teach at de Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam and the Erasmus University in Rotterdam and I am the managing editor for a theoretical physics journal – Foundations of Physics.
Paraclimbing
In my free time I do a lot of climbing. I also participate in paraclimbing competitions every now and then, and am paraclimbing-ambassador for the Dutch mountaineering and outdoor sports society (NKBV). There is no difference between climbing and paraclimbing, but paraclimbing competitions are for disabled athletes.
Lectures
I am available for giving talks to academic and non-academic audiences. My area of expertise is Einstein’s relativity theories (what is space? what is time? what is gravity?) but there are numerous other topics that I’d be willing to give a talk about. Here I list some of them:
- What happens when you fall into a black hole?
- What is time?
- Philosophy of quantum mechanics
- General philosophy of science: what is science? Why trust scientists?
Lezingen
Ik ben beschikbaar voor het geven van lezingen. Mijn specialiteit ligt op het gebied van de filosofie van de wis- en natuurkunde (met een nadruk op Einsteins relativiteit) maar er zijn vele andere onderwerpen waarover ik een interessant verhaal kan houden.
