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What Is a Singularity in Geometrized Newtonian Gravitation?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

James Owen Weatherall
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Abstract

I discuss singular space-times in the context of the geometrized formulation of Newtonian gravitation. I argue first that geodesic incompleteness is a natural criterion for when a model of geometrized Newtonian gravitation is singular, and then I show that singularities in this sense arise naturally in classical physics by stating and proving a classical version of the Raychaudhuri-Komar singularity theorem.

Type
Physical Sciences
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 81 , Issue 5 , December 2014 , pp. 1077 - 1089
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

Thank you to my fellow symposiasts, Erik Curiel and John Manchak; to Jeremy Butterfield, who chaired the session; and to the audience at the PSA 2012 biennial meeting for their helpful comments and questions. I am especially indebted to David Malament for helpful discussions and for detailed comments on a previous draft.

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