Einstein's triumph over the spacetime coordinate system:
| Abstract | Einstein insisted throughout his life that the signal achievement of his general theory of relativity was its general covariance. How are we to reconcile this with the now common view that general covariance merely expresses a definition, our freedom to label events with any set of numbers we like? There is, I believe, a natural reading for Einstein's claims that does make perfect sense. It requires us to adopt a physical interpretation of relativity theory that is now no longer popular, so the natural reading will no longer have intrinsic interest. It will, however, allow us to make sense of Einstein's claims and his program. | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,701 |
| External links | This entry has no external links. Add one. |
| Through your library | Only published papers are available at libraries |
Similar books and articlesDavid J. Baker (2005). Spacetime Substantivalism and Einstein's Cosmological Constant. Philosophy of Science 72 (5):1299-1311.
John Stachel (1989). Einstein's Search for General Covariance, 1912--1915. In D. Howard & John Stachel (eds.), Einstein and the History of General Relativity. Birkhäuser.
Robert DiSalle (1992). Einstein, Newton and the Empirical Foundations of Space Time Geometry. International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 6 (3):181 – 189.
John D. Norton (1995). Did Einstein Stumble? The Debate Over General Covariance. Erkenntnis 42 (2):223 - 245.
J. Earman (2006). Two Challenges to the Requirement of Substantive General Covariance. Synthese 148 (2):443--68.
Jeroen van Dongen (2010). Einstein's Unification. Cambridge University Press.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2009-01-28Total downloads14 ( #83,117 of 549,093 )Recent downloads (6 months)0How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
