Profile
Before joining the Department of Philosophy at The American University in Cairo (AUC), Mario Hubert was the Howard E. and Susanne C. Jessen postdoctoral instructor in the philosophy of physics at the California Institute of Technology from 2019 to 2022. Hubert also received an Early Postdoc Mobility Fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation for conducting research as a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University and New York University between 2018 and 2019.
His research focuses on the ontology and epistemology of modern physics, such as classical mechanics, electrodynamics, and quantum mechanics. He is particularly interested in the following questions: What exists according to our best physical theories? and How can we know and understand what exists?
Hubert’s article When Fields Are Not Degress of Freedom, co-written with Vera Hartenstein, has received an honorable mention in the 2021 BJPS Popper Prize Competition, which is awarded to the article judged to be the best published in that year’s volume of The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.
Hubert is an ordinary trustee of the Philosophy of Physics Society and a Fellow at the John Bell Institute for the Foundations of Physics.
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- PhD in Philosophy, University of Lausanne, Switzerland, 2017.
- Diploma in Mathematics (equivalent to MSc, Minor: Theoretical Physics), LMU Munich, Germany, 2013.
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Articles
- Absorbing the Arrow of Electromagnetic Radiation with Charles Sebens, under review. (preprint)
- Understanding Physics: ‘What?’, ‘Why?’, and ‘How?’ European Journal for Philosophy of Science, 11(3):1-36, 2021. (published version, preprint)
- Reviving Frequentism. Synthese, 199:5255-5284, 2021. (published version, preprint)
- When Fields Are Not Degrees of Freedom with Vera Hartenstein. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 72(1):245-275, 2021. (published) version (preprint). This paper has received an Honourable Mention in the 2021 Popper Prize Competition as top three of the best papers published in The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science in 2021.
- How Quantum Mechanics Can Consistently Describe the Use of Itself with Dustin Lazarovici. Scientific Reports, 9(470):1–8, 2019. (published version, preprint)
- The Wave-Function as a Multi-Field, with Davide Romano. European Journal for Philosophy of Science, 8(3):521–37, 2018. (published version, preprint)
- The Physics and Metaphysics of Primitive Stuff, with Michael Esfeld, Dustin Lazarovici, and Vincent Lam. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 68(1):133–61, 2017. (published version, preprint)
- Quantity of Matter or Intrinsic Property: Why Mass Cannot Be Both, In L. Felline, A. Ledda, F. Paoli, and E. Rossanese, editors, New Developments in Logic and Philosophy of Science, volume 3, pages 267–77. London: College Publications, 2016. (preprint)
- The Ontology of Bohmian Mechanics with Michael Esfeld, Dustin Lazarovici, and Detlef Dürr. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 65(4):773–96, 2014. (published version, preprint)
- Anchoring Causal Connections in Physical Concepts, with Roland Poellinger. In M. C. Galavotti, D. Dieks, W. J. Gonzalez, S. Hartmann, T. Uebel, and M. Weber, editors, New Directions in the Philosophy of Science, volume 5 of The Philosophy of Science in a European Perspective, pages 501–9. Springer International Publishing, 2014. (published version, preprint)
Book Reviews
- The Meaning of the Wave-Function: In Search of the Ontology of Quantum Mechanics, by Shan Gao, Cambridge University Press. In: Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, 2017. Read review
Areas of Specialization
- Philosophy of Physics
- Philosophy of Science
- Metaphysics
- Epistemology
Areas of Competence
- History of Philosophy
- History of Physics
