Eugene Y.S. Chua is a philosopher of science and physics. As a recent graduate of UC San Diego, he is currently a postdoc at the California Institute of Technology, and will be an Assistant Professor at Nanyang Technological Universityin Singapore, under the Nanyang Assistant Professorship scheme, starting from 2024–2025.
What would your childhood self say if someone told you that you would grow up to be a philosopher?
“Philosopher? What’s that?”
What excites you about philosophy?
I think that to philosophize is to contemplate our place in the world. The exciting part, for me, is contemplating what “the world” is supposed to be. A younger me would have been excited about looking for some unified Weltbild (world-picture) of the self and the world. This search drove me as an undergraduate from metaphysics to philosophy of science to philosophy of physics. But the more I looked for it, the more I lost interest in such a picture.
Nowadays, I am more excited about contemplating how limited and messy—yet extremely successful—our scientific world-picture is, leading me to conceptual issues in physics such as the limits of thermodynamics, the approximate, idealized connection between different kinds of entropy, or the supposed disappearance of time in quantum gravity. Recently, I’ve also been thinking about more general conceptual issues in philosophy of science surrounding the heavily idealized nature of our world-picture and how, despite that, we can talk effectively about—and do things in—the world.
What are you working on right now?
Right now, I have a few projects at varying stages of progress. I am currently finishing up a paper with Eddy Keming Chen, where we generalize three programs for addressing the problem of probability in the Everettian approach to quantum mechanics. Roughly, the problem is: what is probability when all branches—all measurement outcomes—are just as real? These programs are typically cast broadly in terms of wave-function realism, but we show how they can be generalized readily to an alternative metaphysics of the quantum state—density-matrix realism—as well.
A second project builds off two of my earlier works on the emergence of time in quantum gravity. I’m attempting to formulate a general worry for claims that time can emerge from a timeless world given quantum gravity. The worry is that the physical procedures with which one derives time might not be justified without appealing to time to begin with—the emergence of time might be physically incoherent.
A third project in the early stages, with Craig Callender, aims to trace how the concept of thermodynamic equilibrium changes drastically as we go from classical physics to relativistic physics, and the various conceptual implications of these changes.
A fourth project investigates the claim that the thermodynamic concept of pressure is Lorentz-invariant when extended to relativistic physics. By tracing the history of this concept, I aim to revise, and add nuance to, this claim in the same spirit as my earlier work “T Falls Apart,” which studied how classical temperature falls apart as a concept in relativistic physics.
With Western Ontario Ph.D. student Yichen Luo, I am also developing a view on which idealization and approximation are but two facets of a more general account of asymptotic reasoning broadly understood. This account will also provide a new generalized account of de-idealization, through which idealizations are justified—messily, partially—in virtue of representing the world, rather than leaving them “unchecked.”
Finally, I am also working on applying and extending John Norton’s material theory of induction to the context of algorithmic bias. The hope is to develop a framework for analyzing how the seemingly purely epistemic notion of induction might implicitly contain normative bias.
What is your favorite film of all time? (Or top 3). Why? To whom would you recommend them?
My top three favorites are:
- Ikiru (“To Live”) by Akira Kurosawa (1952)
- La Grande Bellezza (“The Great Beauty”) by Paolo Sorrentino (2013)
- The Seventh Seal by Ingmar Bergmann (1957)
In their own unique ways, against the backdrop of different times and places, they portray what it is like for humans to seek joy in the face of angst. Moreover, they exhibit exceptional technical artistry, making them noteworthy contributions to cinema as an art form. On a personal level, they also influenced my own decision to pursue philosophy over, among other things, a career in law (I was enrolled in law school for a year before starting over at University of Cambridge for philosophy). While these films are not easy watches, I think anyone looking for a bit of existential introspection should definitely check them out!
What books are currently on your ‘to read’ list?
My backlog of books is always growing… But off the top of my head, some philosophy-related books I hope to start this summer include, in no particular order:
- Benjamin H. Feintzeig’s “The Classical-Quantum Correspondence”
- Bryan W. Roberts’ “Reversing the Arrow of Time”
- John W. Moffat’s “The Shadow of the Black Hole”
- L. Short’s “Charles Peirce and Modern Science”
- “The Pragmatist Challenge: Pragmatist Metaphysics for Philosophy of Science” (edited by Holly K. Anderson and Sandra D. Mitchell)
On the fiction side of things, I also hope to finally finish “No Longer Human” by Osamu Dazai, and to catch up on the manga series “Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End,” written by Kanehito Yamada and illustrated by Tsukasa Abe.
What do you like to do outside work?
Outside of work, I like to play video games, board games, as well as competitive Magic: the Gathering (especially the Modern format). I consume all sorts of media, ranging from Japanese anime to Korean dramas to American TV shows. I also skateboard casually (and badly).
This section of the APA Blog is designed to get to know our fellow philosophers a little better. We’re including profiles of APA members that spotlight what captures their interest not only inside the office, but also outside of it. We’d love for you to be a part of it, so please contact us via the interview nomination form here to nominate yourself or a friend.
Dr. Sabrina D. MisirHiralall is an editor at the Blog of the APA who currently teaches philosophy, religion, and education courses solely online for Montclair State University, Three Rivers Community College, and St. John’s University.
