SIUC Physics Seminar
School of Physics and Applied Physics, Southern Illinois University--Carbondale
2026 March 06 Friday 4:00 PM:
Physics Seminar in Neckers 440
Title: Math and not-Math: Relevant logic as it concerns math (and physics)
Speaker: Leonard Fowler
Affiliation: Southern Illinois University--Carbondale
Abstract:
By non-classical logic, we mean logic that is not classical. Of course,
this is a true but entirely useless characterization. We arrive (whatever that means)
at a non-classical logic by challenging some aspect of the usual (albeit, in some ways, unusual)
classical logic to which we are more or less accustomed. Ideally,
these challenges are well-motivated and lead to some interesting and useful
modes of reasoning, either for doing mathematics, programming machines, or even
talking and reasoning about the workings of the universe itself. So, we shall talk
a little bit about philosophy, math, logic, and physics. In particular, we will talk
about a strain of non-classical logic known as relevant (or relevance, if you must)
logic and how we can start to do mathematics with it by looking at what happens
in the case of vector spaces over the rational numbers.
Biography:
I came to SIU from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, with a BS in Mathematics and Philosophy
and a MA in Cognitive Science. My interests typically fall between mathematics and philosophy,
making me more of logician than either mathematician or philosopher. In the past,
I've worked on graph theory and philosophy of set theory, and here at SIU, I'm studying
how rational vector spaces, being relatively simple objects classically, behave when we
change the logic we are using to study them. The goal here would be to, in some sense,
validate the claims of some philosophers that we (ought to) do mathematics in a suitable
relevant logic; that the true logic of mathematics, whatever that means,
is in important ways relevant.
Last updated on
by K V Shajesh
(kvshajesh@gmail.com).