Online research in philosophy

The issue of the conventionality of geometry is considered in the light of the special theory of relativity. The consequences of Minkowski's insights into the ontology of special relativity are elaborated. Several logically distinct senses of "conventionalism" and "realism" are distinguished, and it is argued that the special theory vindicates some of these possible positions but not others. The significance of the usual distinction between relativity and conventionality is discussed. Finally, it is argued that even though the spatial metric within an inertial reference frame is euclidean, it is impossible to define unique objects which can serve as the relativistic surrogates of the spatial points of classical geometry.

Special relativity is no longer a new revolutionary theory but a firmly established cornerstone of modern physics. The teaching of special relativity, however, still follows its presentation as it unfolded historically, trying to convince the audience of this teaching that Newtonian physics is natural but incorrect and special relativity is its paradoxical but correct amendment. I argue in this article in favor of logical instead of historical trend in teaching of relativity and that special relativity is neither paradoxical nor correct (in the absolute sense of the nineteenth century) but the most natural and expected description of the real space-time around us valid for all practical purposes. This last circumstance constitutes a profound mystery of modern physics better known as the cosmological constant problem.

The first completely geometric approach to relativity theory, based on the space-time geometries of Loedel and Brehme.

We present a streamlined axiom system of special relativity in firs-order logic. From this axiom system we ``derive'' an axiom system of general relativity in two natural steps. We will also see how the axioms of special relativity transform into those of general relativity. This way we hope to make general relativity more accessible for the non-specialist.

Are speical relativity and probabilism compatible? Dieks argues that they are. But the possible universe he specifies, designed to exemplify both probabilism and special relativity, either incorporates a universal "now" (and is thus incompatible with special relativity), or amounts to a many world universe (which I have discussed, and rejected as too ad hoc to be taken seriously), or fails to have any one definite overall Minkowskian-type space-time structure (and thus differs drastically from special relativity as ordinarily understood). Probabilism and special relativity appear to be incompatible after all. What is at issue is not whether "the flow of time" can be reconciled with special relativity, but rather whether explicitly probabilistic versions of quantum theory should be rejected because of incompatibility with special relativity.