Abstract
Longstanding common lore in fundamental physics insists that research on the problem of developing a high-energy theory of quantum gravity (QG) is almost certainly a topic for the theoretician alone. Discriminating signatures of QG in data are just too difficult to come by, whether by means of experimentation (in the context of high energy physics) or of direct detection (in the context of astrophysics and cosmology). Philosophers of physics engaged with the problem of QG have typically endorsed this lore, focusing primarily on conceptual issues as have arisen in various theoretical approaches to the general research topic. Yet, counseling against the lore are several initiatives in recent decades on the empirical side of fundamental physics research, which have garnered considerable attention and enthusiasm in the wider physics community. And so, there is a lacuna within existing philosophical engagement with the problem of QG. The purpose of this symposium is to help fill the gap: four talks will be given about four different empirical strategies that have been proposed for getting significant empirical traction on the problem of QG, with philosophical reflection on how much one might justly expect to learn about the theoretical problem from each of them.
