David B. Malament


UCI Distinguished Professor 

of

Logic and Philosophy of Science


Research  Interests
 		Recent Papers
 		Curriculum Vitae
 		Lecture Notes
 		Contact Information

Southern California Philosophy of Physics Reading Group

Research Interests:

I am interested in the mathematical and philosophical foundations of modern physics. I have done some work on classical equilibrium statistical mechanics [6] and quantum mechanics [14, 17]. (The numbers refer to papers listed in my cv.) But most of my work has dealt with problems of spacetime structure and the foundations of relativity theory. Topics have included: (i) the "causal structure" of spacetime [4, 5]; (ii) the relation of relativity theory to Newtonian gravitation theory [10, 11, 16]; (iii) Gödel's model of spacetime structure [8, 12, 14, 15, 18]; and (iv) rotation in relativity theory [9, 18, 19]. I am presently trying to bring together these investigations (and others) in a book on the foundations of relativity theory. 

Recent Papers:

        (A complete bibliography (with download links) is included in my curriculum vitae.

"On the Status of the 'Geodesic Principle'  in General Relativity", under review
[preprint]
"Note on Carnap's 'On the Dependence of the Properties of Space Upon Those of Time' ", to appear as an introductory note, accompanying Carnap's essay, in Collected Works of Rudolf Carnap, Volume 1: Early Writings, eds. A. W. Carus, Michael Friedman, Wolfgang Kienzler, and Sven Schlotter, Open Court Press.
[preprint]

"Norton's Slippery Slope", Philosophy of Science, vol. 75, no. 4, 2008.
[eprint]

"Classical General Relativity",  in Butterfield, J. and Earman, J. (eds.),  Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. Volume 2: Philosophy of Physics, Elsevier, 2006.
[preprint]

"On the Time Reversal Invariance of Classical Electromagnetic Theory", Studies in the History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, vol. 35, no. 2, 2004.
[eprint] 


"On Relative Orbital Rotation in General Relativity", in Ashtekar, A. (ed.), Revisiting the Foundations of Relativistic Physics: Festschrift for John Stachel, Kluwer, 2003.
[preprint]


"A No-Go Theorem About Rotation in Relativity Theory", in Malament, D. (ed.), Reading Natural Philosophy (Essays Dedicated to Howard Stein on His 70th Birthday), Open Court Press, 2002.
[eprint]

Lecture Notes are available for the following courses:

For Undergraduates and Graduate Students:

        Probability and Determinism (Winter 2010)              
Geometry and Spacetime (Fall 2009)                                                        
For Graduate Students:
Foundations of Relativity Theory I and II  (Winter and Spring 2009)     
              

Contact Information:

Office: SST 757
Phone: (949) 824-7374
Email: dmalamen@uci.edu