COURSES


HIST 107: History of the Physical Sciences
Fall 2021: M,W,F: 11:00 - 11:50 am - Tschannen Science Bldg, 1002

HIST 104A: History of Ancient Science
Fall 2021: M,W,F: 9:00 - 9:50 am -Tschannen Science Bldg, 1002

HIST 199: Special Problems in
History and Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics

ST 4320: Orthodox Christianity and Modern Science
U.C. Berkeley - Graduate Theological Union

OTHER COURSES:

RECENT & UPCOMING TALKS:

July 10, 2021 - Cobb Institute, Claremont Graduate University - Symposium panelist: "Untying the Gordian Knot - Process, Reality, and Context"

September 26-28, 2019 - Keynote Talk, Stony Brook University: “Subject, Object, and Ontological Process in Quantum Mechanics” 2nd Annual Phenomenological Approaches to Physics Conference (Brochure and Speaker Schedule)

August 21-22, 2019 - Santa Fe Institute - Presentation: "Dipolar Duality: Actuality and Potentiality in Quantum Mechanics" - Thirty Years of Complex Thinking: A Celebration of Stuart Kauffman’s Contributions to the Field of Complex Systems

June 17-20, 2018 - Eighteenth Annual Biosemiotics Gathering - UC Berkeley Presentation: "Quantum Origins of Ontic Emergence"

February 8-12, 2018 - Arizona State University - Ontogenesis Process Group Santa Fe, New Mexico. Workshop: Stuart Kauffman, Complexity Theory; Sha Xin Wei, Arts, Media & Engineering, ASU; Philip Thurtle, Comp. History of Ideas, Univ. of Washington; Michael Epperson, History and Philosophy of Science, CSUS-CPNS; Cary Wolfe, Cultural Theory, Rice University; Adam Nocek, Arts, Media & Engineering, ASU; Erin Espelie, Film Studies & Critical Media Practices, University of Colorado Boulder, Editor-in Chief, Natural History magazine

November 13-15, 2017 - Arizona State University - Beyond Complexity: The Biosocial After the Digital - Presentation: “Contextual Measurement in Quantum Mechanics: Inducing the Objective Global from the Subjective Local.”

April 19-23, 2017 - Arizona State University - School of Arts, Media, and Engineering - Ontogenesis Group - Inaugural Workshop - Santa Fe, New Mexico. Stuart Kauffman; Sha Xin Wei, Arts, Media & Engineering, ASU; Michael Epperson, History and Philosophy of Science, CSUS-CPNS; Cary Wolfe, Cultural Theory, Rice University; Philip Thurtle, Comp. History of Ideas, Univ. of Washington; Adam Nocek, Arts, Media & Engineering, ASU

January 13-16, 2016 - Arizona State University - School of Arts, Media, and Engineering - Synthesis Center: Workshop: "Quantum Mechanics + Category Theory After Deleuze and Badiou"

June 4-7, 2015 - Pomona College: 10th International Whitehead Conference: Seizing an Alternative: Toward an Ecological Civilization: 4 talks: [1] Section IV, Track 2 “The Ontology of Contextualized Potentiality: Whiteheadian Internal Relations in Quantum Mechanics”; [2] Section IV, Track 7: "The Behavioral, Neural, and Quantum Correlates of Conscious Experience: A Whiteheadian Look at Tononi and Koch’s Integrated Information Theory"; [3] Section II, Track 1: “A Mereotopological Bridging of Prehension and Extension in Whiteheadian Cosmology”; [4] Section IX, Track 4: “The Whiteheadian Path from Quantum Physics to Psychology”

May 22-24, 2014 - Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich: Presentation: "The Ontology and Epistemology of Internal Relations: Bridging the Physical and Conceptual in Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Information": 5th Metalithikum Klausur Symposium: "Computation as Literacy: Self Organizing Maps"

April 5-6, 2014 - University of California, Davis: Presentation: "Potentiality and Contextuality in Quantum Mechanics": Symposium, "Quantity/Quality: The Problem of Measure in Philosophy and Science"

October 9, 2013 - Institute of Philosophy, Eötvös Loránd University Budapest, Hungary: Presentation: "Potentiality and Contextuality in Quantum Mechanics: The Relational Realist Approach”

For a complete list of past events, click here.

OTHER WORK - ETHICS & WARFARE: Documentary film on the World War II civilian resistance in Crete - The 11th Day About the film view trailer   British Embassy Screening www.The11thDay.org Documentary film on the Battle for Outpost Harry in the Korean War - Outpost Harry view clip   CSUS News Release
Click here for more information on these films.

LATEST ESSAY:

"The Creative Universe" Institute of Art and Ideas News, Issue 96, June 11, 2021

RESEARCH:

Latest Papers:

Epperson, M. “Relational Realism and the Ontogenetic Universe: Subject, Object, and Ontological Process in Quantum Mechanics.” Angelaki 25:3 (2020)

R. Kastner, S. Kauffman, M. Epperson, "Taking Heisenberg's Potentia Seriously" International Journal of Quantum Foundations, 4:2 (2018) 158-72 (This paper was featured in Science News)

Additional Recent Papers: click here.

Four grants as Principal Investigator: For project publications click here.

1. Experimental Application of the Relational Realist Formalism: A Topological, Sheaf-Theoretic Explication of Quantum Geometric Phases By Analysis of Experimental Data on the Aharonov-Bohm Effect, the Pancharatnam Phase, and the Quantum Hall Effect, Toward a Unified Interpretation (2013-16)

Principal Investigators: Michael Epperson and Elias Zafiris. Co-Investigators: Karim Bschir, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology; Timothy Eastman, NASA-Goddard. Supported by a grant from the Fetzer-Franklin Fund (Grant D34C101) and the Parmenides Foundation - $181,200

Foundations of Relational Realism (Rowman & Littlefield, 2013) represents the capstone of our previous project, along with a number of published papers and conference presentations. With this foundational work in place, our next step is to demonstrate the experimental applicability of this sheaf theoretic quantum formalism and its philosophical conceptual framework—viz. its advantages both in terms of prediction and interpretation of data. We propose to apply the relational realist framework to the task of explicating the well-known but poorly understood problem of quantum geometric phases. We will do so by analysis of experimental data on the Aharonov-Bohm Effect, the Pancharatnam Phase, and the Quantum Hall Effect, toward a unified interpretation.

2. Foundations of Relational Realism: The Evolution of Set Theoretic External Relations to Category Theoretic Internal Relations Toward an Event-Ontological, Topological Approach to Quantum Mechanics (2010-13)

Principal Investigator: Michael Epperson. Co-Investigators: Elias Zafiris, Senior Research Fellow in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics, University of Athens; Stuart Kauffman, Research Professor, Complex Systems Center, University of Vermont; Timothy Eastman, NASA-Goddard; Karim Bschir, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. Supported by a grant from the Fetzer-Franklin Fund (Grant D21C62) $572,760

3. Logical Causality in Quantum Mechanics: Relational Realism and the Evolution of Ontology to Praxiology in the Philosophy of Nature (2008-9)

NEWS RELEASE

Principal Investigator: Michael Epperson. Co-Investigators: David Finkelstein, Professor, Department of Physics, Georgia Institute of Technology; Henry P. Stapp, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Timothy Eastman, NASA-Goddard. Supported by a grant from the Fetzer-Franklin Fund (Grant D11C36) $209,000

4. Quantum Mechanical Investigations into the Causal and Logical Orders and the Physical Basis of Possibility (2007-8)

Principal Investigator: Michael Epperson. Co-Investigators: David Finkelstein, Department of Physics, Georgia Institute of Technology; Henry P. Stapp, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Timothy Eastman, NASA-Goddard. Supported by a grant from CTNS-STARS and the John Templeton Foundation - $20,000

SELECTED PAPERS:

Epperson, M. “Relational Realism and the Ontogenetic Universe: Subject, Object, and Ontological Process in Quantum Mechanics.” Angelaki 25:3 (2020)

R. Kastner, S. Kauffman, M. Epperson, "Taking Heisenberg's Potentia Seriously" International Journal of Quantum Foundations, 4:2 (2018) 158-172
(See also Tom Siegfried's review article on this paper in Science News)

M. Epperson, “Event-Ontological Quantum Mechanics: A Process Theoretic Approach” in Physics and Speculative Philosophy: Potentiality and Modern Science. Eds. Timothy Eastman, Michael Epperson, and David Ray Griffin. Berlin: De Gruyter (2016)

M. Epperson, “The Common Sense of Quantum Theory: Exploring the Internal Relational Structure of Self-Organization in Nature”, Coding as Literacy, Metalithicum 5. Ed. Vera Bühlmann and Ludger Hovestadt. Birkhäuser (2015)

“Whitehead and Modern Physics” in Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Thought. Nicholas Rescher, Johanna Seibt, Michel Weber, eds. Ontos-Verlag (2013)

K. Bschir, M. Epperson, E. Zafiris, “Decoherence: A View from Topology,” Center for Philosophy and the Natural Sciences, California State University Sacramento (2014)

“The Mechanics of Concrescence: Quantum Theory and Process Metaphysics,” Studia Whiteheadiana (Poland), Vol 4 (2010): 159-190)

“Quantum Mechanics and Relational Realism: Logical Causality and Wavefunction Collapse,” Process Studies, 38:2 (2009)

"Relational Realism: The Evolution of Ontology to Praxiology in the Philosophy of Nature," World Futures, 65:19-41, Routledge (2009)