Northern Illinois University

Faculty Member, Philosophy

Assistant professor

College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

About

I have studied physics and philosophy first in Italy, my home country, and then in the United States.
I have worked in the foundations of quantum mechanics, in particular in the framework of Bohmian mechanics, a quantum theory without observers.
My main concern has always been to understand what the world is really like and how we can use our best physical theory to answer such general metaphysical questions.
In my physics doctoral dissertation, I discussed the classical limit of quantum mechanics, to analyze the connections between the quantum and the classical theories. What does it mean that a theory, in a certain approximation, reduces to another? Is the classical explanation of macroscopic phenomena essentially different from the one provided by quantum mechanics?
In my philosophy doctoral dissertation I turned to more general questions that involve the structure of fundamental physical theories, the metaphysical status and the epistemological role of the theoretical entities used in these theories. Do all fundamental physical theories have the very same structure, contrarily to what one might think? If so, what is this telling us about the nature of explanation?
I have worked mainly in collaboration with Detlef Duerr, Sheldon Goldstein, Roderich Tumulka and Nino Zanghi in Bohmian mechanics, writing several articles with them.
I am is also co-author of a book on the philosophy and foundations of physics, written in Italian, together with Mauro Dorato, Federico Laudisa and Nino Zanghi.
The book, "La Natura delle Cose" (The Nature of Things), has been written mainly for a philosophy or a physics student who is interested in the main problems of the theory of relativity, statistical mechanics, quantum theory and causation, but it might be accessible, even if with some effort, by an interested reader.

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