History and Philosophy of Cosmology Conference - H&PCC 2026

6 Jul 2026, 00:00 → 9 Jul 2026, 19:00 Europe/Athens

Kostis Palamas Building

The COSMOS Network is pleased to announce the 3^rd History & Philosophy of Cosmology Conference, to be held 6–9 July 2026 at the University of Athens.

Keynote Speakers

• Jean-Philippe Uzan (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - CNRS)
• Helen Meskhidze (University of Cincinnati)
• Emmanuel Saridakis (National Observatory of Athens)

 

We invite researchers, scholars, and practitioners working in the philosophy and history of cosmology and astrophysics to submit abstracts exploring the philosophical and historical dimensions of modern cosmology and astrophysics.

Suggested topics, approached from a historical and/or philosophical perspective, include (but are not limited to): 

• puzzles in modern cosmology
• cosmological tensions
• dark matter
• dark energy
• black holes
• modified gravity approaches
• varying constants in cosmology
• gravitational waves
• multi-messenger astrophysics and cosmology
• quantum cosmology

Abstracts may be that  submitted for Symposia or individual contributed talks (See Call for Abstracts)

The deadline for submissions is 28 February 2026, 23:59 EET.

Please note that this is an in-person event. Online attendance and virtual presentations are not available.

Programme Committee:
Antonis Antoniou (University of Athens)
Silvia De Bianchi (University of Milan)
Juliusz Doboszewski (Jagiellonian University)
Claus Kiefer (University of Cologne)
Lorenzo Lorenzetti (University of Lugano)
Niels Martens (University of Utrecht)
Christopher Smeenk (University of Western Ontario)

Local Organization: Antonis Antoniou, Theodore Arabatzis, Stavros Ioannides, Vanessa Seifert, Vassilis Sakellariou, Nikos Alexiou

The event is generously supported by the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Athens, and the Institute for Astronomy, Astrophysics, Space Applications and Remote Sensing at the National Observatory of Athens.

PRACTICAL INFO_HPCC2026.pdf

Monday 6 July

09:30 Registration and Welcome

1 Quantum Gravity and the Big Bang: Singularities, Bounces, and Spacetime Emergence

Speaker: Alvaro Mozota Frauca (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya)

2 Epistemology of spacetime topology

Speaker: Marta Bielinska (The Centre for Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh)

11:00 Coffee Break

3 Causality, Chance and Cosmology

Speaker: Sulona Kandhai (University of Szczecin)

4 Predictions in an Uncertain World

Speaker: Antonios Papaioannou (University of Rennes)

5 What differentiates astrophysical experiments?

Speaker: Rami Jreige (University of Bristol)

13:00 Lunch Break

6 Quantum Information in Cosmology

Speakers: Maria Eftychia Papageorgiou, Prof. Charis Anastopoulos (University of Patras), Prof. Achim Kempf (University of Waterloo)

16:30 Coffee Break

7 Keynote Speach - Title: TBA

Speaker: Prof. Emmanuel Saridakis (National Observatory of Athens)

Tuesday 7 July

8 ESRO, Space-based Research, and Fundamental Physics.

Speaker: ALESSIO ROCCI (Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and Solvay Institutes)

9 The Epistemic Productivity of Erroneous Reanalyses in Black Hole Imaging

Speaker: Paula Muhr (paula.muhr@brand-university.de)

10 Black Holes or Neutron Stars? The Implicit Bets Behind the First Detection of Gravitational Waves

Speaker: Jean-Philippe Martinez (Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute))

11:00 Coffee Break

11 The Secret Lives of Mass Gap Black Holes

Speaker: Dr Jamee Elder (Tufts University)

12 Physicality Behind Black Hole Universality

Speaker: Yichen Luo (Nanyang Technological University and Rotman Institute of Philosophy)

13 Why care about going beyond Kerr?

Speaker: Juliusz Doboszewski (Jagiellonian University & Black Hole Initiative, Harvard)

13:00 Lunch Break

14 Signature Change and Kretschmann Invariance: Atemporality and Empirical Constraints in Black Hole Shadows

Speakers: Emmanuele Battista (INFN Frascati), Salvatore Capozziello (University of Naples Federico II), Silvia De Bianchi (University of Milan)

16:30 Coffee Break

15 Nature of contemporary Astronomy and Astrophysics: portrait of unique sciences

Speaker: Charly Mobers (UNamur, KU Leuven, Royal Observatory of Belgium)

16 From Saving the Phenomena to Phenomenological Modelling: A Genealogy of Cosmological Phenomenology

Speaker: Julien Bernard (Centre Gilles Gaston Granger UMR7304 CNRS, Aix-Marseille Université)

Wednesday 8 July

17 Dark Matter and Scientific Realism: An Extensional Approach Among Realist Frameworks

Speaker: Evangelos Georgoudis (University of Amsterdam)

18 Realism in the Shadows; Philosophical Reflections on Universe’s Dark Sector

Speaker: Nikolaos Alexiou (Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Athens)

19 Is dark matter the ether of the 21st century?

Speaker: Antonis Antoniou (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens)

11:00 Coffee Break

20 From Causal Boundary to Epistemic Interface: The Conceptual Transformation of Horizons in Modern Cosmology

Speaker: Susanna Piombo

21 Four flatness problems in cosmology

Speaker: Dr Phillip Helbig

22 Whence the Desire to Close the Universe?

Speaker: Jonathan Fay (University of Bristol)

13:00 Lunch Break

23 Are Wormholes Physically Unreasonable?

Speaker: Sanne Vergouwen (Utrecht University)

24 Ontological aspects of gravity from the geometrical trinity

Speakers: Dr Charalampos Tzerefos (National Observatory of Athens), Dr Fotios Anagnostopoulos (University of Peloponnese)

16:00 Coffee Break

25 Cosmological Methodology in the Face of Tensions [Keynote speaker]

It is often argued that anomalies and tensions in current theories reveal where they might be lacking and "hint at" future theories. While this may hold true for some historical cases, I argue that the current "precision tension era” (Di Valentino, Said, and Saridakis, 2025) in cosmology—typified by the Hubble and S8 tensions—has a different character. These tensions indicate that ΛCDM is lacking, but do not provide guidance for where the problem lies or criteria for evaluating the pursuit-worthiness of alternative theoretical proposals. The result is a clear mapping of the possibility space by theorists and a huge proliferation of viable theoretical proposals but no consensus on any particular proposal. Given that tensions are not providing the theoretical guidance often expected in such situations, a natural response might be to adopt an eliminative strategy wherein proposals are evaluated by their ability to resolve the tension and eliminated if they cannot. Comparative approaches, such as the "H0 Olympics" pursued by Schöneberg et al. (2022), exemplify this tendency to evaluate models individually. While initially appealing, I argue that this approach assumes a stability and modularity to the tensions that they do not actually exhibit. Instead, I advocate for a compositional approach wherein proposals are assessed by their contributions to alleviating the tension and their compatibility with other proposals. Such an approach pushes cosmologists to consider how proposals might jointly work to resolve tensions and may, counterintuitively, favor more flexible approaches that are sometimes dismissed as ad hoc.

Speaker: Helen Meskhidze (University of Cincinnati)

20:00 Conference Dinner - Location: TBA

Thursday 9 July

26 Effective Realism and the Problem of Boltzmann Brains

Speaker: Marco Maggiani (University of Pittsburgh)

27 The Antinomies of Modern Cosmology: AI, Epistemic Limits, and the Kantian Horizon

Speaker: Marius Augustin Draghici (Institute of Philosophy and Psychology of the Romanian Academy)

11:00 Coffee Break

28 From Cosmic Dipoles to the Cosmological Principle

Speaker: Mr Kartik Tiwari (University of Bonn)

29 Can we test the Copernican Principle?

Speaker: George Papadopoulos (History and Philosophy of Science and Technology)

30 Toward a Foundation for Cosmo/Astrostatistics: Deidealization from Structure Formation to the Cosmos

Speaker: Tianzhe Cozette Shen (University of Arizona)

13:00 Lunch Break

31 Experiments, models, and unification, or why gravitational waves are not ripples of spacetime

Speaker: Antonio Ferreiro

32 Can the Constants Vary? Some Metaphysical and Cosmological Considerations

Speaker: Mahmoud Jalloh

33 The Nomic Status of the Fundamental Constants of Nature: The Case of the Cosmological Constant

Speaker: Niels Martens (Utrecht University)

16:30 Coffee Break

34 The fundamental constants at the heart of measurement and cosmology [Keynote speaker]

On 16 November 2018, the 26th General Conference on Weights and
Measures adopted the new International System of Units (SI). The new
definition of the base units, including the kilogram, is based on a choice
of universal constants. This is the culmination of a long process that
began on 26 March 1791. This presentation will review this scientific and
historical adventure, the importance of units and their definitions and
the choice of defining them on the basis of natural constants. This will
require us to look again at the role of constants in the laws of nature:
What is a constant? How can we be sure that they remain constant? What are
their links with the units and tests of general relativity? These topical
questions will prompt us to consider some recent advances in theoretical
physics, as well as the history of the evolution of scientific ideas over
more than two centuries... and open an unexpected new window on the
search for dark matter and dark energy or any new physical degree of
freedom, a key issue in modern cosmology!

Speaker: Prof. Jean-Philippe Uzan (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)