Reflections on Spacetime: Foundations, Philosophy, History

ISBN-13: 9789048146123 / Angielski / Miękka / 2010 / 165 str.

Ulrich Majer; Heinz-Jurgen Schmidt

Opis

This book presents a collection of research papers, written by physicists, philosophers and historians of science who had participated in the Zentrum fur interdisziplinare Forschung (ZiF) during the academic year 1992/93 in order to discuss the nature and structure of spacetime as it is used in general relativity. All contributions focus on unsolved questions, such as the possibility of time machines, referential indeterminacy, the hole problem, and the conventional vs. empirical character of spacetime. These papers having a more historical colour deal with Einstein's view of general covariance and with the epistemological status of space(time) in the works of Carnap, Weyl and Hilbert, all of whom relate their position to Husserl's phenomenology, yet in fundamentally different ways."

Spis treści

Editorial preface: reflections on spacetime - foundations, philosophy and history. Outlawing time machines: chronology protection theorems; J. Earman. A new semantics for the epistemology of geometry. I: Modeling spacetime structure; R.A. Coleman, H. Korté. A new semantics for the epistemology of geometry. II: Epistemological completeness of Newton-Galilei and Einstein-Maxwell theory; R.A. Coleman, H. Korté. A minimal interpretation of general relativistic spacetime geometry; H.-J. Schmidt. Science without reference? F. Mühlhölzer. Did Einstein stumble? The debate over general covariance; J.D. Norton. Carnap and Weyl on the foundations of geometry and relativity theory; M. Friedman. Geometry, intuition and experience: from Kant to Husserl; U. Majer.