This book contains selected papers from the First International Conference on the Ontology of Spacetime. Its fourteen chapters address two main questions: first, what is the current status of the substantivalism/relationalism debate, and second, what about the prospects of presentism and becoming within present-day physics and its philosophy? The overall tenor of the four chapters of the book's first part is that the prospects of spacetime substantivalism are bleak, although different possible positions remain with respect to the ontological status of spacetime. Part II and Part III of the...
This book contains selected papers from the First International Conference on the Ontology of Spacetime. Its fourteen chapters address two main questi...
This book provides a philosophically informed and mathematically rigorous introduction to the 'standard model' of particle physics. The standard model is the currently accepted and experimentally verified model of all the particles and interactions in our universe. All the elementary particles in our universe, and all the non-gravitational interactions -the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, and the electromagnetic force - are collected together and, in the case of the weak and electromagnetic forces, unified in the standard model. Rather than presenting the calculational...
This book provides a philosophically informed and mathematically rigorous introduction to the 'standard model' of particle physics. The standard model...
In this book Rickles considers several interpretative difficulties raised by gauge-type symmetries (those that correspond to no change in physical state). The ubiquity of such symmetries in modern physics renders them an urgent topic in philosophy of physics. Rickles focuses on spacetime physics, and in particular classical and quantum general relativity. Here the problems posed are at their most pathological, involving the apparent disappearance of spacetime Rickles argues that both traditional ontological positions should be replaced by a structuralist account according to which relational...
In this book Rickles considers several interpretative difficulties raised by gauge-type symmetries (those that correspond to no change in physical sta...
The sixteen papers collected in this volume are expanded and revised versions of talks delivered at the Second International Conference on the Ontology of Spacetime, organized by the International Society for the Advanced Study of Spacetime (John Earman, President) at Concordia University (Montreal) from 9 to 11 June 2006.
Most chapters are devoted to subjects directly relating to the ontology of spacetime.
The book starts with four papers that discuss the ontological status of spacetime and the processes occurring in it from a point of view that is first of all conceptual...
The sixteen papers collected in this volume are expanded and revised versions of talks delivered at the Second International Conference on the Onto...