History of the concept of matter and the historical-relative a priori in physics

This project deals with historical-systematic connections between contemporary approaches in physics and individual natural philosophical approaches from the early modern period and classical German philosophy. The main subject of the investigation is the concept of matter and the concept of the field.

For the early modern period, current field metaphysical interpretations of Spinoza's ethics are critically classified and examined with regard to the connections they have with the search for a unified field theory within physics at the beginning of the 20th century. Based on Leibniz's physics (dynamics) and Weyl's related work, the significance and development of the modern concept of holography for a theory of quantum gravity is also discussed.

For the epoch of classical German philosophy, comparative studies of the concepts of space, time, matter and causality in Kant, Fichte and Schelling are undertaken. In addition to the connection to contemporary physics, the focus here is on the philosophical reception of these authors in the last century - in particular by Peirce, Whitehead, Cassirer, Weyl, von Weizsäcker and Friedman.

Overall, the project works towards a form of historical dialectics that - instead of making claims to ultimate justification - is oriented towards the concept of a “historically relative a priori” (Friedman) and examines the temporal change in the theoretical and formal prerequisites of approaches in physics. In the case of the concept of matter, such a dialectic can be seen as the historical back-and-forth between the attempts to dissolve matter completely into space-time or its geometry and the attempts to understand it as an “agent” that produces effects in space-time.

Publications on the subject:

• N. Sieroka (2020): Unities of Knowledge and Being – Weyl’s Late “Existentialism” and Heideggerian Phenomenology. In: Phenomenological Approaches to Physics (Synthese Library Series), ed. by H.A. Wiltsche and P. Berghofer. Springer-Verlag, Dordrecht, S. 107-122.
• N. Sieroka (2019): Neighbourhoods and Intersubjectivity: Analogies between Weyl's Analyses of the Continuum and Transcendental-Phenomenological Theories of Subjectivity. In: Weyl and the Problem of Space: From Science to Philosophy (Studies in History and Philosophy of Science), ed. by J. Bernard and C. Lobo. Springer-Verlag, Dordrecht 2019, S. 99-122.
• N. Sieroka (2018): Theoretical Construction in Physics. Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics Physics 61, pp. 6-17.
• N. Sieroka (2017): Schellingsches Natur- und Materieverständnis im und um das 20. Jahrhundert. In: Fichte und Schelling: Der Idealismus in der Diskussion, Bd.III (Acta des Brüsseler Kongresses 2009 der Internationalen J.G. Fichte-Gesellschaft), ed. by T. Grohmann, L. Held and J.-C. Lemaitre. EuroPhilosophie Éditions. Online available
• N. Sieroka (2016): Retrospective Analogies: Means for Understanding Leibniz's Metaphysics. In: "Für unser Glück oder das Glück der Anderen" (Vorträge des X. Internationalen Leibniz-Kongresses), ed. by W. Li. Olms, Hildesheim 2016, Band IV, S. 285-299.
• N. Sieroka (2015): Transzendentale Naturlehre im Zeitalter von Relativitätstheorie und Quantenmechanik: Neuinterpretationen von Raum, Zeit und Kausalität durch Cassirer, Medicus und Weyl. In: "Natur" in der Transzendentalphilosophie, ed. by H. Girndt. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, pp. 431-446.
• N. Sieroka (2015): Some Remarks on the Historical Origin and Current Prospects of Holography. In: Proceedings of the Thirteenth Marcel Grossmann Meeting on General Relativity, ed. by R.T. Jantzen, K. Rosquist und R. Ruffini. World Scientific, Singapur, pp. 2242-2244.
• N. Sieroka, E.W. Mielke (2014): Holography as a Principle in Quantum Gravity? – Some Historical and Systematic Observations. Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 46, pp. 170-178.
• N. Sieroka (2013): A Post-Kantian Approach to the Constitution of Matter. In: Objectivity after Kant: Its Meaning, Its Limitations, Its Fateful Omissions, ed. by G. Van de Vijer and B. Demarest. Olms, Hildesheim, pp. 41-55.
• N. Sieroka (2010): Geometrization Versus Transcendent Matter: A Systematic Historiography of Theories of Matter. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 61 (4), pp. 769-802.
• N. Sieroka (2010): Umgebungen – Symbolischer Konstruktivismus im Anschluss an Hermann Weyl und Fritz Medicus. Chronos-Verlag, Zürich 2010.
  Rezensionen in: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science (44(1), 2013, P. Pesic), HOPOS (3(1), 2013, T. Ryckman)
• N. Sieroka (2010): Spinozistische Feldmetaphysik und physikalisches Materieverständnis. Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Philosophie 35 (2), pp. 105-122.
• N. Sieroka (2009): Tobias Cheung, Res Vivens – Agentenmodelle organischer Ordnung 1600-1800 (Book Review). History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 31 (3-4), pp. 477-478.

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