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LOCATION:Howison Library
SEQUENCE:0
DTEND:20090924T180000
DTSTART:20090924T161000
UID:philosophy.berkeley.edu:events:546
DTSTAMP:20091124T202121
DESCRIPTION:This talk combines philosophy of science and history of philoso
 phy concerns.  We shall examine a basic example of mixed level modeling wit
 hin science\, wherein macroscopic data is combined with smaller scale consi
 derations to provide a predictive framework that is generally far more trus
 tworthy than any straightforward "bottom up" modeling (our discussion will 
 center\, quite literally\, on how beams bend).  Leibniz had a keen apprecia
 tion of the merits of such modeling (he wrote the first important scientifi
 c paper on\nthe subject) and seems to have based his understanding of the p
 hrase "the best of all possible worlds" upon the kind of optimization appro
 priate to mixed level schemes.  Oddly enough\, a surprising story of free w
 ill emerges naturally from this way of thinking.
SUMMARY:George Myro Memorial Lecture\nMark Wilson\nFrom the Bending of Beam
 s to the Problem of Free Will
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