Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T02:41:26.924Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Dynamical Approach as Practical Geometry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Syman Stevens
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article introduces Harvey Brown and Oliver Pooley’s ‘dynamical approach’ to special relativity, and argues that it may be construed as a relationalist form of Einstein’s ‘practical geometry’. This construal of the dynamical approach is shown to be compatible with related chapters of Brown’s text and also with recent descriptions of the dynamical approach by Pooley and others.

Type
Space-Time Physics
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 82 , Issue 5 , December 2015 , pp. 1152 - 1162
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

Thanks are due to Neil Dewar and Thomas Møller-Nielsen for helpful comments on an earlier draft. Special thanks are also due to Oliver Pooley, Christopher Timpson, and Harvey Brown for their guidance in the larger project from which this article emerged.

References

Brown, H. 1997. “On the Role of Special Relativity in General Relativity.” International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 11 (1): 67–81.10.1080/02698599708573551CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, H. 2005. Physical Relativity: Space-Time Structure from a Dynamical Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, H., and Pooley, O.. 2001. “The Origin of the Spacetime Metric: Bell’s ‘Lorentzian Pedagogy’ and Its Significance in General Relativity.” In Physics Meets Philosophy at the Planck Scale: Contemporary Theories in Quantum Gravity, ed. Callender, C. and Huggett, N., 256–72. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Huggett, N. 2006. “Minkowski Space-Time: A Glorious Non-entity.” In The Ontology of Spacetime, vol. 1 of Philosophy and Foundations of Physics Series, ed. Dieks, D., 67–89. Amsterdam: Elsevier.Google Scholar
DiSalle, R. 1995. “Spacetime Theory as Physical Geometry.” Erkenntnis 42 (3): 317–37.10.1007/BF01129008CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Earman, J. 1989. World Enough and Space-Time: Absolute versus Relational Theories of Space and Time. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Einstein, A. 1905. “Zur elektrodynamik bewegter körper.” Annalen der Physik 322 (10): 891–921.10.1002/andp.19053221004CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Einstein, A. 1921. Geometrie und Erfahrung: Erweiterte Fassung des Festvortrages Gehalten an der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, am 27 Januar 1921. Berlin: Springer.10.1007/978-3-642-49903-6CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Einstein, A. 1925. “Nichteuklidische geometrie und physik.” Die Neue Rundschau 36 (1): 16–20.Google Scholar
Einstein, A. 1949. “Autobiographical Notes.” In Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, ed. Schilpp, P.. Library of Living Philosophers 7. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Schilpp, P.. Library of Living Philosophers 7 1952. “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies.” In The Principle of Relativity: A Collection of Original Memoirs on the Special and General Theory of Relativity, ed. Perrett, W. and Jeffery, G. B., 35–65. Mineola, NY: Dover.Google Scholar
Jeffery, G. B. 1954. “Geometry and Experience.” In Ideas and Opinions, ed. Seelig, C., 232–46. New York: Crown.Google Scholar
Friedman, M. 2002. “Geometry as a Branch of Physics: Background and Context for Einstein’s ‘Geometry and Experience.’” In Reading Natural Philosophy: Essays in the History and Philosophy of Science, ed. Malament, D., 193–229. Chicago: Open Court.Google Scholar
Geroch, R. 1978. General Relativity from A to B. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Giovanelli, M. 2013. “Talking at Cross-Purposes: How Einstein and Logical Positivists Never Agreed on What They Were Disagreeing About.” Synthese 190 (17): 3819–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hempel, C. 1945. “Geometry and Empirical Science.” American Mathematical Monthly 52 (1): 7–17.10.1080/00029890.1945.11991492CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hilbert, D. 1971. Foundations of Geometry. 2nd English ed. Trans. Leo Unger from the 10th German ed. of Grundlagen der Geometrie. Revised and enlarged by Paul Bernays. La Salle, IL: Open Court.Google Scholar
Howard, D. 2014. “Einstein and the Development of Twentieth-Century Philosophy of Science.” In The Cambridge Companion to Einstein, ed. Janssen, M. and Lehner, C.. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Huggett, N. 2006. “The Regularity Account of Relational Spacetime.” Mind 115 (457): 41–73.10.1093/mind/fzl041CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huggett, N. 2009. “Essay Review: Physical Relativity and Understanding Space-Time.” Philosophy of Science 36 (3): 404–22.Google Scholar
Maudlin, T. 1993. “Buckets of Water and Waves of Space: Why Spacetime Is Probably a Substance.” Philosophy of Science 60 (2): 183–203.10.1086/289728CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, A. 1981. Albert Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity: Emergence (1905) and Early Interpretation (1905–1911). Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.Google Scholar
Nerlich, G. 2013. Einstein’s Genie: Spacetime out of the Bottle. Montreal: Minkowski Institute.Google Scholar
Norton, J. 2008. “Why Constructive Relativity Fails.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 59 (4): 821–34.10.1093/bjps/axn046CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poincaré, H. 1898. “On the Foundations of Geometry.” Monist 9 (1): 1–43.Google Scholar
Poincaré, H. 1905/1905. Science and Hypothesis. Repr. New York: Dover.Google Scholar
Pooley, O. 2002. “The Reality of Spacetime.” PhD diss., Oxford University.Google Scholar
Pooley, O. 2013. “Substantivalist and Relationalist Approaches to Spacetime.” In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Physics, ed. Batterman, R., 522–86. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Quine, W. 1951. “Ontology and Ideology.” Philosophical Studies 2 (1): 11–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skow, B. 2006. Review of Physical Relativity: Space-Time Structure from a Dynamical Perspective, by Harvey R. Brown. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=6603.Google Scholar
Stachel, J., ed. 1998. Einstein’s Miraculous Year. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar