John Earman

  • Distinguished University Professor Emeritus; Adjunct Professor, Department of Philosophy

Before coming to Pittsburgh, Earman taught at UCLA, The Rockefeller University, and the University of Minnesota. He is the author of A Primer on Determinism; World Enough and Spacetime: Absolute vs. Relational Theories of Space and Time; Bayes or Bust: A Critical Examination of Bayesian Confirmation Theory; and Bangs, Crunches, Hume's Abject Failure: The Argument Against Miracles , Whimpers and Shrieks: Singularities and Acausalities in Relativistic Spacetimes. His research interests include the history and philosophy of physics, and the general philosophy of science.

Selected Courses Taught

  • Introduction to the Philosophy of Science
  • Foundations of Quantum Field Theory 
  • Foundations of General Relativity and Relativistic Cosmology

Professional Memberships

  • Former President of the Philosophy of Science Association
  • Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
  • Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences

Working Paper

"The Unruh Effect"

Education & Training

  • PhD, Philosophy, Princeton University, 1968

Representative Publications

“The ‘Past Hypothesis’: Not Even False,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 37 (2006): 399-430.

“In the Beginning, At the End, and All in Between: Cosmological Aspects of Time,” F. Stadler and M. Stöltzner (eds.), Time and History: Proceedings of the 28th International Ludwig Wittgenstein Symposium (Ontos-Verlag, 2006). 

“Aspects of Determinism in Modern Physics” in J. Butterfield and J. Earman (eds.), Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. Philosophy of Physics (Elsevier, 2007). 

“Do the Laws of Physics Forbid the Operation of Time Machines?” (coauthored with Christopher Smeenk and Christopher Wüthrich), Synthese, in press. 

“Self-Adjointness: Implications for Determinism and the Classical-Quantum Correspondence,” Synthese, in press. 

"Superselection for Philosophers," Erkenntnis, in press.