From the 7th to the 10th of June, Vienna was - if such is still possible in the internet age - the center of the physics world. The "Vienna Symposium on the Foundations of Modern Physics" was organized by the working group of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information of the Faculty of Physics of the University of Vienna. Caslav Brukner, Markus Arndt, Markus Aspelmeyer and Anton Zeilinger were among the local organizers.

Approximately 165 people from over 25 countries attended the conference, among them well-known physicists as Claude Cohen-Tannoudji,  William Unruh, Charles Bennett and too many others to list them all here.

Four days of intense talks and discussions

Each of the four days of the conference that was largely held in the Main Lecture Hall at Strudlhofgasse 4 was devoted to a certain topic. The material was dense, in large parts mathematical, and not easily compressible without irresponsible abbreviation. I can only give here a highly idiosyncratic view of the conference, through the lense of a philosopher of science. A physicist may have taken note of very different things.

The idea of the conference was to explicitly discuss the foundational questions - not only to "shut up and calculate", as the great Richard Feynman would have put it, but to discuss the very philosophical and metaphysical underpinnings of the world as we know it. Indeed, I think that this is of utmost importance: it is not the goal of science to only measure and predict,  but to explain. To this end it is vital to think deeply about results of experiments and their philosophical implications. It is very beneficial that a conference was held with such a process in mind.

Fundamental Tests and Experiments

The first day was firmly in the hand of experimentalists - which reported impressive progress on the manipulation of matter on the ultra-small level. Whereas quantum weirdness stood at the beginning of quantum mechanics in the 1930s and has confounded philosophers and physicists ever since, the possible effects which can be reaped from the quantum world are only gradually being explored. The increased precision and imaginativeness of these experiments promise not only further experimental data but also new insights to support further theoretical and philosophical excursions.

Read more (PDF) bout the Symposium on the Foundations of Modern Physics: news about time travel, recommendations from accomplished physicists to young researchers, the "physical realism" and the prospect of a second symposium in two or three years.

Günther Greindl is currently writing his PhD thesis in the philosophy of science at the Department of Philosophy of Science at the University of Vienna. He holds degrees in Law and Computer Science.