5 May 2026, online philosophy seminar at the Warsaw University of Technology | Attendance | Recording | Slides (PDF)
Abstract: Relational physics begins from the premise that only relations within the universe are physically meaningful. This challenges the role of absolute structures, most notably external scale, in our description of reality. Once such external references are removed from physical configurations, what remains is, by definition, shape: the scale-free structure of inter-relations within configurations. Pure Shape Dynamics is a relational framework in which dynamical models are formulated solely based on shape space and its intrinsic geometric structures. This imposes a strict formal constraint: all admissible models must be constructed without reference to background structures. I will present a minimal set of constructive kinematical and dynamical principles for formulating theories within Pure Shape Dynamics, and explore their implications for both classical and quantum physics. In essence, the proposal is that only shapes and their dynamical striving toward the growth of structure and variety are real.
11 February 2026, at the 13th Tux Winter Workshop on Quantum Gravity