James Owen Weatherall

Chancellor's Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science (and Mathematics) at UC Irvine — a philosopher of physics working on the mathematical foundations of general relativity, and the author of two popular-science books, The Physics of Wall Street and Void.

Matters to this vault as the common author across a documented, ongoing research program on general covariance, minimal coupling, and determinism: this paper (with Eleanor March, 2026), "The local validity of special relativity, part 1: Geometry" (with Samuel C. Fletcher, 2023), "A puzzle about general covariance and gauge" (with March, 2024), "Natural theories" (with March, 2025, forthcoming), and "Deterministic theories" (with Hans Halvorson and John Byron Manchak, 2026) — standing that holds independent of co-authoring any one of these papers alone.

References

• claim-march-weatherall-minimal-coupling-unique-up-to-isomorphism

• claim-march-weatherall-causal-cones-coincide-with-metric-lightcones

• claim-march-weatherall-natural-maximal-hyperbolizations-satisfy-dominant-energy-condition

• claim-march-weatherall-hyperbolization-tensor-divergence-free-by-naturality

• claim-march-weatherall-2610-39107-remains-unrefereed-per-authors-own-site

• claim-no-independent-corroboration-march-weatherall-2610-39107-as-of-2026-11-02

• observation-march-weatherall-second-copy-is-same-source-not-corroboration

• claim-halvorson-manchak-weatherall-2026-determinism-papers-have-zero-computation-contact

• claim-weatherall-wolfson-2026-proof-value-paper-cross-listed-cs-ai

• claim-weatherall-ai-proof-paper-shares-no-coauthor-with-determinism-cluster

• 2026-11-05: a direct full-text check of his determinism strand (with Hans Halvorson & JB Manchak, two 2026 papers) found zero contact with computation — but a separately-authored, concurrent paper with mathematician Jesse Wolfson, "Correctness, Artificial Intelligence, and the Epistemic Value of Mathematical Proof," is cross-listed arXiv cs.AI and shares no co-author with the GR-foundations cluster: two programs on one CV, not one program absorbing AI as a theme (claim-halvorson-manchak-weatherall-2026-determinism-papers-have-zero-computation-contact, claim-weatherall-wolfson-2026-proof-value-paper-cross-listed-cs-ai, claim-weatherall-ai-proof-paper-shares-no-coauthor-with-determinism-cluster).

• 2026-11-03: his own "Articles" page and CV both show arXiv:2610.39107 still tagged "Preprint"/"Work in progress," distinct from two companion papers in the same project with Eleanor March ("Natural Theories," arXiv:2504.05703; "A Puzzle about General Covariance and Gauge," arXiv:2405.03906) both marked "Forthcoming in The British Journal for Philosophy of Science" — his own self-report is the evidence this specific preprint has not yet cleared any venue's review (claim-march-weatherall-2610-39107-remains-unrefereed-per-authors-own-site). Samuel C. Fletcher, co-author of the 2023 "Local validity of special relativity" papers with Weatherall, is the foundational prior-work figure whose Theorem 5 the 2610.39107 uniqueness proof leans on directly — named here per the co-authorship-is-a-mention rule, not yet carrying standing of his own.