Michael Epperson

I study the historical and philosophical foundations of physics with an emphasis on quantum theory and its rehabilitation of ancient Hellenic ideas about the relationship between mathematics and nature. (Ph.D. University of Chicago 2003)

More generally, I explore the philosophical implications underlying recent innovations in quantum mechanics, cosmology, and complexity theory, with an approach grounded in the study of the historical evolution of the conceptual frameworks central to these disciplines.

I did my doctoral work in metaphysics, philosophy of science and philosophy of religion at The University of Chicago, and earned my Ph.D. there in 2003. My dissertation, Quantum Mechanics and the Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead (Fordham University Press, 2004, 2nd ed. 2012) was written under the direction of my two supervisors, philosopher David Tracy and physicist Peter Hodgson, Head of the Nuclear Physics Theoretical Group at the University of Oxford. My follow-on work, Foundations of Relational Realism: A Topological Approach to Quantum Mechanics and the Philosophy of Nature (Rowman & Littlefield, 2013), co-authored with quantum theorist and mathematician Elias Zafiris (Ph.D., Theoretical Physics, Imperial College, University of London) explores the ontological significance of potentia and contextuality in quantum mechanics, toward a mereotopological, relational interpretation.