Dan Linford
I have a PhD from and was a Bilsland Fellow at Purdue University. I was also a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the chemistry department at University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Currently, I am a Visiting Instructor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Old Dominion University.
My philosophical research is at the intersection of philosophy of science (particularly philosophy of physics) and philosophy of religion. My core interest in the philosophical foundations of physical cosmology ties together both philosophical areas. A broad family of arguments in philosophy of religion -- cosmological arguments -- identify some ubiquitous feature of physical reality and then claim that, in light of that feature, the totality of physical reality must have a cause, typically claimed to be God. However, cosmological arguments raise perennial philosophical issues that should be of interest to philosophers with no interest in God (particularly to philosophers of physics and metaphysicians), that should not be marginalized to philosophy of religion, and that form the core of a fruitful philosophical research program. I am investigating the scope and nature of causation in order to determine whether the totality of physical reality could have had a cause; what it means for physical reality to have had a beginning; and whether and under what conditions we could know that physical reality began to exist. I am currently writing a monograph that investigates the epistemology of physical cosmogony.
As a postdoctoral fellow in the Yesselman Group in the Department of Chemistry at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, I investigated how the physical properties of RNA determine its three dimensional structure. RNA is important for both its biological functions and for its potential applications in diverse future technologies, such as biosensors, switches, pharmaceuticals, and vaccines. RNA is a complex and extremely flexible molecule, whose parts -- like lego bricks -- can be assembled in myriad ways. Two distinct parts of the same RNA molecule can contact one another in three dimensional space and thereby form tertiary contacts; in turn, the formation of tertiary contacts locks an RNA molecule into a stable three dimensional configuration. At present, there is no general predictive model of tertiary contact formation. I addressed this research gap through the first high-throughput investigations of tertiary contact formation.
I care deeply about undergraduate education and have ongoing pedagogical research. I have designed and built a prototype for a single device that can be used in physics, chemistry, or engineering classrooms to demonstrate some of the pivotal phenomena that initiated the twentieth century's revolution in the physical sciences. My device makes use of the fact that some car tail light bulbs contain two tungsten filaments. When current is run through one of the filaments, the filament heats to incandescence and spontaneously emits electrons. The other filament can be used to detect the emitted electrons. This phenomenon is called thermionic emission. Thermionic emission was pivotal in the early development of quantum mechanics and is one of the core principles in the operation of early computers, particle accelerators, microwave ovens, high end audio amplifiers, and in an earlier generation of televisions. In addition to demonstrating thermionic emission, the device can be used to demonstrate blackbody radiation and the fact that electrons carry a negative charge. While I originally designed the device for use in university classrooms, I am redesigning the device using cheaper components so that the device will be affordable for low income high schools.
Supervisors: Paul Draper and Joseph Yesselman
My philosophical research is at the intersection of philosophy of science (particularly philosophy of physics) and philosophy of religion. My core interest in the philosophical foundations of physical cosmology ties together both philosophical areas. A broad family of arguments in philosophy of religion -- cosmological arguments -- identify some ubiquitous feature of physical reality and then claim that, in light of that feature, the totality of physical reality must have a cause, typically claimed to be God. However, cosmological arguments raise perennial philosophical issues that should be of interest to philosophers with no interest in God (particularly to philosophers of physics and metaphysicians), that should not be marginalized to philosophy of religion, and that form the core of a fruitful philosophical research program. I am investigating the scope and nature of causation in order to determine whether the totality of physical reality could have had a cause; what it means for physical reality to have had a beginning; and whether and under what conditions we could know that physical reality began to exist. I am currently writing a monograph that investigates the epistemology of physical cosmogony.
As a postdoctoral fellow in the Yesselman Group in the Department of Chemistry at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, I investigated how the physical properties of RNA determine its three dimensional structure. RNA is important for both its biological functions and for its potential applications in diverse future technologies, such as biosensors, switches, pharmaceuticals, and vaccines. RNA is a complex and extremely flexible molecule, whose parts -- like lego bricks -- can be assembled in myriad ways. Two distinct parts of the same RNA molecule can contact one another in three dimensional space and thereby form tertiary contacts; in turn, the formation of tertiary contacts locks an RNA molecule into a stable three dimensional configuration. At present, there is no general predictive model of tertiary contact formation. I addressed this research gap through the first high-throughput investigations of tertiary contact formation.
I care deeply about undergraduate education and have ongoing pedagogical research. I have designed and built a prototype for a single device that can be used in physics, chemistry, or engineering classrooms to demonstrate some of the pivotal phenomena that initiated the twentieth century's revolution in the physical sciences. My device makes use of the fact that some car tail light bulbs contain two tungsten filaments. When current is run through one of the filaments, the filament heats to incandescence and spontaneously emits electrons. The other filament can be used to detect the emitted electrons. This phenomenon is called thermionic emission. Thermionic emission was pivotal in the early development of quantum mechanics and is one of the core principles in the operation of early computers, particle accelerators, microwave ovens, high end audio amplifiers, and in an earlier generation of televisions. In addition to demonstrating thermionic emission, the device can be used to demonstrate blackbody radiation and the fact that electrons carry a negative charge. While I originally designed the device for use in university classrooms, I am redesigning the device using cheaper components so that the device will be affordable for low income high schools.
Supervisors: Paul Draper and Joseph Yesselman
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Papers by Dan Linford
Friends of the KCA have sought to defend their view that physical reality began to exist in two distinct ways. As I discuss in chapter 2, the first way in which friends of the KCA have sought to defend their view that physical reality began to exist involves a family of a priori arguments meant to show that, as a matter of metaphysical necessity, the past must be finite. If the past is necessarily finite, then the past history of physical reality is necessarily finite. And if having a finite past suffices for having a beginning, then, since the past history of physical reality is necessarily finite, physical reality necessarily began to exist. I show that the arguments which have been offered thus far for the view that the past is necessarily finite do not succeed. Moreover, as I elaborate on in chapter 5, having a finite past does not suffice for having a beginning.
As I discuss in chapter 3, the second way in which friends of the KCA have sought to defend their view that physical reality began to exist involves a family of a posteriori arguments meant to show that we have empirical evidence that physical reality has a finite past history. For example, the big bang is sometimes claimed to have been the beginning of physical reality and, since we have excellent empirical evidence for the big bang, we have excellent empirical evidence for the beginning of physical reality. The big bang can be understood in two ways. On the one hand, the big bang can be understood as a theory about the history and development of the observable universe. Understood in that sense, then I agree that the big bang is supported by excellent empirical evidence and by a scientific consensus. On the other hand, some authors (particularly science popularizers, science journalists, and religious apologists) have wrongly interpreted big bang theory as a theory about the beginning of the whole of physical reality. As I argue, while a beginning of physical reality may be consistent with classical big bang theory, classical big bang theory does not provide good reason for thinking that physical reality began to exist.
In part II, I turn to discussing three necessary, but not necessarily sufficient, conditions for physical reality to have a beginning. Before discussing the three conditions, in chapter 4, I introduce three metaphysical accounts of the nature of time (A-theory, B-theory, and C-theory) as well as some formal machinery that will subsequently become useful in the dissertation. I introduce the first of the three conditions in chapter 5. According to the Modal Condition, physical reality began to exist only if, at the closest possible worlds without time, physical reality does not exist. I show that this condition helps us to make sense of various views in both theology and philosophy of physics. In chapter 6}, I introduce the second of my three conditions, the Direction Condition, according to which, roughly, physical reality began to exist only if all space-time points agree about the direction of time, so that all space-time points can agree that physical reality's putative beginning took place in their objective past. In chapter 7, I discuss the third condition, the Boundary Condition, according to which physical reality began to exist only if there is a past temporal boundary such that physical reality did not exist before the boundary. I show that there are two senses in which physical reality could be said to have had a past temporal boundary. Lastly, in chapter 8, I show that there is a relationship between my three conditions and classical big bang theory, even though the relationship is not the one usually identified in the literature.
In part III, I present four arguments for the view that, at the present stage of philosophical and scientific inquiry, we cannot know whether physical reality satisfies the three necessary conditions to have had a beginning and, consequently, we cannot know whether physical reality had a beginning. As I will prove in chapter 9, no set of observations that we currently have, when conjoined with General Relativity, entails that physical reality satisfies the Direction or Boundary Conditions. As I show in chapter 10, considerations in the philosophical foundations of statistical mechanics entail either that the Cosmos violates the Modal Condition or else that there is a transcendental condition on the possibility of our knowledge of the past that prevents our access to data we would need to gather to determine whether physical reality satisfies the Boundary Condition. In chapter 11, I show that there are a number of live cosmological models according to which physical reality does not satisfy the Boundary Condition. As long as we don't know whether any of those cosmological models are correct, we do not know whether physical reality satisfies the Boundary Condition. Lastly, I turn to confirmation theory and show that, at our present stage of inquiry, ampliative inferences for the conclusion that physical reality satisfies the Modal, Direction, and Boundary Conditions are not successful.