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Understanding Gauge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

James Owen Weatherall
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Abstract

I consider two usages of the expression “gauge theory.” On one, a gauge theory is a theory with excess structure; on the other, a gauge theory is any theory appropriately related to classical electromagnetism. I make precise one sense in which one formulation of electromagnetism, the paradigmatic gauge theory on both usages, may be understood to have excess structure and then argue that gauge theories on the second usage, including Yang-Mills theory and general relativity, do not generally have excess structure in this sense.

Type
Formal Methods
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 83 , Issue 5 , December 2016 , pp. 1039 - 1049
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

This material is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation under grant 1331126. Thank you to Thomas Barrett, Gordon Belot, Ben Feintzeig, Richard Healey, David Malament, Sarita Rosenstock, and David Wallace for helpful discussions related to the material in this article; to Thomas Barrett, Ben Feintzeig, David Malament, J. B. Manchak, and Sarita Rosenstock for comments on an earlier draft; and to my fellow symposiasts—Thomas Barrett, Hans Halvorson, and Sahotra Sarkar—for a stimulating session at the 2014 PSA biennial meeting, at which this work was presented.

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