Lab Meetings

The Edge of the Universe team holds hybrid lab meetings roughly once per fortnight at LSE in person in  LAK 3.02 and online via the Zoom link included here. If you would like to attend, please first request permission from Bryan Roberts at b.w.roberts@lse.ac.uk.

2025-2026 Autumn Term

Boundary Conditions and Laws: We begin with the literature on the philosophy of boundary conditions.

Date Topic Reading

Mon, 13 Oct

10:00-11:30 GMT

 Boundary Conditions & Laws Wilson (1990) ‘Law along the Frontier: Differential Equations and Their Boundary Conditions’. Optional supplementary reading: Sklar (1990) ‘How free are initial conditions?’

Thu, 23 Oct

16:00-17:30

 Boundary Conditions & Laws Burston (2021) ‘The Function of Boundary Conditions in the Physical Sciences’

Research Strategy

The Philosophical Foundations of the Edge of the Universe project aims to build up the philosophical and conceptual foundations for an analysis of the edge of the universe, viewed as a boundary of the universe on the largest scale. There are four overlapping work streams, implemented over the course of five years, from 2025-2030:

  1. Varieties of Boundaries: a classification of boundary conditions in physics, including their properties, uses, and epistemologies.
  2. Case Studies at the Edge: an analysis of how the boundary of the universe informs the frontiers of physics where new ideas are actively being developed, for example in the study of Hawking radiation and holographic physics.
  3. Boundary Framework: the development of a general framework for understanding boundary conditions in physics.
  4. Edge of the Universe: An assessment of the edge of the universe in modern physics, and in comparison to broader perspectives on both boundaries and on the limits of our world.