Are Newtonian Gravitation and Geometrized Newtonian Gravitation Theoretically Equivalent?

Erkenntnis 81 (5):1073-1091 (2016)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

I argue that a criterion of theoretical equivalence due to Glymour :227–251, 1977) does not capture an important sense in which two theories may be equivalent. I then motivate and state an alternative criterion that does capture the sense of equivalence I have in mind. The principal claim of the paper is that relative to this second criterion, the answer to the question posed in the title is “yes”, at least on one natural understanding of Newtonian gravitation.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 105,859

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

(Competing?) Formulations of Newtonian Gravitation.Kevin Coffey - 2024 - Journal of Philosophy 121 (11):628-656.
On the status of the geodesic principle in Newtonian and relativistic physics.James Owen Weatherall - 2011 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 42 (4):276-281.
Newtonian Spacetime Structure in Light of the Equivalence Principle.Eleanor Knox - 2014 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 65 (4):863-880.
The Motion of a Body in Newtonian Theories.James Owen Weatherall - 2011 - Journal of Mathematical Physics 52 (3):032502.
Inertial motion, explanation, and the foundations of classical spacetime theories.James Owen Weatherall - 2016 - In Dennis Lehmkuhl, Gregor Schiemann & Erhard Scholz, Towards a Theory of Spacetime Theories. New York, NY: Birkhauser. pp. 13-42.

Analytics

Added to PP
2015-09-07

Downloads
183 (#138,665)

6 months
16 (#194,769)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

James Weatherall
University of California, Irvine

Citations of this work

Duality and Ontology.Baptiste Le Bihan & James Read - 2018 - Philosophy Compass 13:e12555.
Sophistication about Symmetries.Neil Dewar - 2019 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 70 (2):485-521.
Fundamental and Emergent Geometry in Newtonian Physics.David Wallace - 2020 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 71 (1):1-32.
Glymour and Quine on Theoretical Equivalence.Thomas William Barrett & Hans Halvorson - 2016 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 45 (5):467-483.

View all 74 citations / Add more citations

References found in this work

Theory and Evidence.Clark N. Glymour - 1980 - Princeton University Press.
Space, Time, and Spacetime.Lawrence Sklar - 1974 - University of California Press.
What Scientific Theories Could Not Be.Hans Halvorson - 2012 - Philosophy of Science 79 (2):183-206.

View all 34 references / Add more references