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  1. Physical relativity from a functionalist perspective.Eleanor Knox - 2017 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 67:118-124.
    This paper looks at the relationship between spacetime functionalism and Harvey Brown’s dynamical relativity. One popular way of reading and extending Brown’s programme in the literature rests on viewing his position as a version of relationism. But a kind of spacetime functionalism extends the project in a different way, by focussing on the account Brown gives of the role of spacetime in relativistic theories. It is then possible to see this as giving a functional account of the concept of spacetime (...)
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  • Are Newtonian Gravitation and Geometrized Newtonian Gravitation Theoretically Equivalent?James Owen Weatherall - 2016 - Erkenntnis 81 (5):1073-1091.
    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.
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  • Stating structural realism: mathematics‐first approaches to physics and metaphysics.David Wallace - 2022 - Philosophical Perspectives 36 (1):345-378.
    I respond to the frequent objection that structural realism fails to sharply state an alternative to the standard predicate-logic, object / property / relation, way of doing metaphysics. The approach I propose is based on what I call a ‘math-first’ approach to physical theories (close to the so-called ‘semantic view of theories') where the content of a physical theory is to be understood primarily in terms of its mathematical structure and the representational relations it bears to physical systems, rather than (...)
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  • Fundamental and Emergent Geometry in Newtonian Physics.David Wallace - 2020 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 71 (1):1-32.
    Using as a starting point recent and apparently incompatible conclusions by Saunders and Knox, I revisit the question of the correct spacetime setting for Newtonian physics. I argue that understood correctly, these two versions of Newtonian physics make the same claims both about the background geometry required to define the theory, and about the inertial structure of the theory. In doing so I illustrate and explore in detail the view—espoused by Knox, and also by Brown —that inertial structure is defined (...)
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  • Glymour and Quine on Theoretical Equivalence.Thomas William Barrett & Hans Halvorson - 2016 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 45 (5):467-483.
    Glymour and Quine propose two different formal criteria for theoretical equivalence. In this paper we examine the relationships between these criteria.
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  • The Dynamical Approach to Spacetime Theories.Harvey R. Brown & James Read - 2022 - In Eleanor Knox & Alastair Wilson, The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Physics. London, UK: Routledge.
    We review the dynamical approach to spacetime theories---in particular, its origins in the development of special relativity, its opposition to the contemporary `geometrical' approach, and the manner in which it plays out in general relativity. In addition, we demonstrate that the approach is compatible with the `angle bracket school'.
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  • Morita Equivalence.Thomas William Barrett & Hans Halvorson - 2016 - Review of Symbolic Logic 9 (3):556-582.
    Logicians and philosophers of science have proposed various formal criteria for theoretical equivalence. In this paper, we examine two such proposals: definitional equivalence and categorical equivalence. In order to show precisely how these two well-known criteria are related to one another, we investigate an intermediate criterion called Morita equivalence.
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  • How to count structure.Thomas William Barrett - 2022 - Noûs 56 (2):295-322.
    There is sometimes a sense in which one theory posits ‘less structure’ than another. Philosophers of science have recently appealed to this idea both in the debate about equivalence of theories and in discussions about structural parsimony. But there are a number of different proposals currently on the table for how to compare the ‘amount of structure’ that different theories posit. The aim of this paper is to compare these proposals against one another and evaluate them on their own merits.
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  • Motivating dualities.James Read & Thomas Møller-Nielsen - 2020 - Synthese 197 (1):263-291.
    There exists a common view that for theories related by a ‘duality’, dual models typically may be taken ab initio to represent the same physical state of affairs, i.e. to correspond to the same possible world. We question this view, by drawing a parallel with the distinction between ‘interpretational’ and ‘motivational’ approaches to symmetries.
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  • Two miracles of general relativity.James Read, Harvey R. Brown & Dennis Lehmkuhl - 2018 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 64:14-25.
    We approach the physics of \emph{minimal coupling} in general relativity, demonstrating that in certain circumstances this leads to violations of the \emph{strong equivalence principle}, which states that, in general relativity, the dynamical laws of special relativity can be recovered at a point. We then assess the consequences of this result for the \emph{dynamical perspective on relativity}, finding that potential difficulties presented by such apparent violations of the strong equivalence principle can be overcome. Next, we draw upon our discussion of the (...)
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  • Equivalent and Inequivalent Formulations of Classical Mechanics.Thomas William Barrett - 2019 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 70 (4):1167-1199.
    In this article, I examine whether or not the Hamiltonian and Lagrangian formulations of classical mechanics are equivalent theories. I do so by applying a standard for equivalence that was recently introduced into philosophy of science by Halvorson and Weatherall. This case study yields three general philosophical payoffs. The first concerns what a theory is, while the second and third concern how we should interpret what our physical theories say about the world. 1Introduction 2When Are Two Theories Equivalent? 3Preliminaries on (...)
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  • What Do Symmetries Tell Us About Structure?Thomas William Barrett - 2017 - Philosophy of Science (4):617-639.
    Mathematicians, physicists, and philosophers of physics often look to the symmetries of an object for insight into the structure and constitution of the object. My aim in this paper is to explain why this practice is successful. In order to do so, I present a collection of results that are closely related to (and in a sense, generalizations of) Beth’s and Svenonius’ theorems.
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  • Invariance, Interpretation, and Motivation.Thomas Møller-Nielsen - 2017 - Philosophy of Science 84 (5):1253-1264.
    In this article I assess the Invariance Principle, which states that only quantities that are invariant under the symmetries of our theories are physically real. I argue, contrary to current orthodoxy, that the variance of a quantity under a theory’s symmetries is not a sufficient basis for interpreting that theory as being uncommitted to the reality of that quantity. Rather, I argue, the variance of a quantity under symmetries only ever serves as a motivation to refrain from any commitment to (...)
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  • Categories and the Foundations of Classical Field Theories.James Owen Weatherall - 2017 - In Elaine M. Landry, Categories for the Working Philosopher. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
    I review some recent work on applications of category theory to questions concerning theoretical structure and theoretical equivalence of classical field theories, including Newtonian gravitation, general relativity, and Yang-Mills theories.
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  • Rethinking Newton’s Principia.Simon Saunders - 2013 - Philosophy of Science 80 (1):22-48.
    It is widely accepted that the notion of an inertial frame is central to Newtonian mechanics and that the correct space-time structure underlying Newton’s methods in Principia is neo-Newtonian or Galilean space-time. I argue to the contrary that inertial frames are not needed in Newton’s theory of motion, and that the right space-time structure for Newton’s Principia requires the notion of parallelism of spatial directions at different times and nothing more. Only relative motions are definable in this framework, never absolute (...)
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  • How could relativity be anything other than physical?Wayne C. Myrvold - 2019 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 67:137-143.
    Harvey Brown’s Physical Relativity defends a view, the dynamical perspective, on the nature of spacetime that goes beyond the familiar dichotomy of substantivalist/relationist views. A full defense of this view requires attention to the way that our use of spacetime concepts connect with the physical world. Reflection on such matters, I argue, reveals that the dynamical perspective affords the only possible view about the ontological status of spacetime, in that putative rivals fail to express anything, either true or false. I (...)
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  • Background Independence, Diffeomorphism Invariance, and the Meaning of Coordinates.Oliver Pooley - 2016 - In Dennis Lehmkuhl, Gregor Schiemann & Erhard Scholz, Towards a Theory of Spacetime Theories. New York, NY: Birkhauser.
    Diffeomorphism invariance is sometimes taken to be a criterion of background independence. This claim is commonly accompanied by a second, that the genuine physical magnitudes (the ``observables'') of background-independent theories and those of background-dependent (non-diffeomorphism-invariant) theories are essentially different in nature. I argue against both claims. Background-dependent theories can be formulated in a diffeomorphism-invariant manner. This suggests that the nature of the physical magnitudes of relevantly analogous theories (one background free, the other background dependent) is essentially the same. The temptation (...)
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  • A new approach to the relational‐substantival debate.Jill North - 2018 - Oxford Studies in Metaphysics 11:3-43.
    We should see the debate over the existence of spacetime as a debate about the fundamentality of spatiotemporal structure to the physical world. This is a non-traditional conception of the debate, which captures the spirit of the traditional one. At the same time, it clarifies the point of contention between opposing views and offsets worries that the dispute is stagnant or non-substantive. It also unearths a novel argument for substantivalism, given current physics. Even so, that conclusion can be overridden by (...)
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  • Mutual translatability, equivalence, and the structure of theories.Thomas William Barrett & Hans Halvorson - 2022 - Synthese 200 (3):1-36.
    This paper presents a simple pair of first-order theories that are not definitionally (nor Morita) equivalent, yet are mutually conservatively translatable and mutually 'surjectively' translatable. We use these results to clarify the overall geography of standards of equivalence and to show that the structural commitments that theories make behave in a more subtle manner than has been recognized.
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  • (1 other version)The limitations of inertial frame spacetime functionalism.James Read & Tushar Menon - 2021 - Synthese 199 (2):229-251.
    For Knox, ‘spacetime’ is to be defined functionally, as that which picks out a structure of local inertial frames. Assuming that Knox is motivated to construct this functional definition of spacetime on the grounds that it appears to identify that structure which plays theoperationalrole of spacetime—i.e., that structure which is actually surveyed by physical rods and clocks built from matter fields—we identify in this paper important limitations of her approach: these limitations are based upon the fact that there is a (...)
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  • Maxwell-Huygens, Newton-Cartan, and Saunders-Knox Space-Times.James Owen Weatherall - 2016 - Philosophy of Science 83 (1):82-92.
    I address a question recently raised by Simon Saunders concerning the relationship between the space-time structure of Newton-Cartan theory and that of what I will call “Maxwell-Huygens space-time.” This discussion will also clarify a connection between Saunders’s work and a recent paper by Eleanor Knox.
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  • Isolated systems and their symmetries, part I: General framework and particle-mechanics examples.David Wallace - 2022 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 92 (C):239-248.
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  • Maxwell Gravitation.Neil Dewar - 2018 - Philosophy of Science 85 (2):249-270.
    This article gives an explicit presentation of Newtonian gravitation on the backdrop of Maxwell space-time, giving a sense in which acceleration is relative in gravitational theory. However, caution is needed: assessing whether this is a robust or interesting sense of the relativity of acceleration depends on some subtle technical issues and on substantive philosophical questions over how to identify the space-time structure of a theory.
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  • Dark matter = modified gravity? Scrutinising the spacetime–matter distinction through the modified gravity/ dark matter lens.Niels C. M. Martens & Dennis Lehmkuhl - 2020 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 72:237-250.
    This paper scrutinises the tenability of a strict conceptual distinction between space and matter via the lens of the debate between modified gravity and dark matter. In particular, we consider Berezhiani and Khoury's novel 'superfluid dark matter theory' as a case study. Two families of criteria for being matter and being spacetime, respectively, are extracted from the literature. Evaluation of the new scalar field postulated by SFDM according to these criteria reveals that it is as much matter as anything could (...)
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  • Knox’s inertial spacetime functionalism.David John Baker - 2020 - Synthese 199 (S2):277-298.
    Eleanor Knox has argued that our concept of spacetime applies to whichever structure plays a certain functional role in the laws. I raise two objections to this inertial functionalism. First, it depends on a prior assumption about which coordinate systems defined in a theory are reference frames, and hence on assumptions about which geometric structures are spatiotemporal. This makes Knox’s account circular. Second, her account is vulnerable to several counterexamples, giving the wrong result when applied to topological quantum field theories (...)
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  • Underdetermination in classic and modern tests of general relativity.William J. Wolf, Marco Sanchioni & James Read - 2024 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 14 (4):1-41.
    Canonically, ‘classic’ tests of general relativity (GR) include perihelion precession, the bending of light around stars, and gravitational redshift; ‘modern’ tests have to do with, _inter alia_, relativistic time delay, equivalence principle tests, gravitational lensing, strong field gravity, and gravitational waves. The orthodoxy is that both classic and modern tests of GR afford experimental confirmation of that theory _in particular_. In this article, we question this orthodoxy, by showing there are classes of both relativistic theories (with spatiotemporal geometrical properties different (...)
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  • Are Maxwell Gravitation and Newton-Cartan Theory Theoretically Equivalent?Eleanor March - forthcoming - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.
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  • On Spacetime Functionalism.David John Baker - manuscript
    Eleanor Knox has argued that our concept of spacetime applies to whichever structure plays a certain functional role in the laws (the role of determining local inertial structure). I raise two complications for this approach. First, our spacetime concept seems to have the structure of a cluster concept, which means that Knox's inertial criteria for spacetime cannot succeed with complete generality. Second, the notion of metaphysical fundamentality may feature in the spacetime concept, in which case spacetime functionalism may be uninformative (...)
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  • (1 other version)The limitations of intertial frame spacetime functionalism.Tushar Menon & James Read - 2019 - Synthese 1 (Suppl 2):229-251.
    For Knox, ‘spacetime’ is to be defined functionally, as that which picks out a structure of local inertial frames. Assuming that Knox is motivated to construct this functional definition of spacetime on the grounds that it appears to identify that structure which plays the operational role of spacetime—i.e., that structure which is actually surveyed by physical rods and clocks built from matter fields—we identify in this paper important limitations of her approach: these limitations are based upon the fact that there (...)
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  • Symmetries and the philosophy of language.Neil Dewar - 2015 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 52 (Part B):317-327.
    In this paper, I consider the role of exact symmetries in theories of physics, working throughout with the example of gravitation set in Newtonian spacetime. First, I spend some time setting up a means of thinking about symmetries in this context; second, I consider arguments from the seeming undetectability of absolute velocities to an anti-realism about velocities; and finally, I claim that the structure of the theory licences us to interpret models which differ only with regards to the absolute velocities (...)
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  • More problems for Newtonian cosmology.David Wallace - 2017 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 57:35-40.
    I point out a radical indeterminism in potential-based formulations of Newtonian gravity once we drop the condition that the potential vanishes at infinity. This indeterminism, which is well known in theoretical cosmology but has received little attention in foundational discussions, can be removed only by specifying boundary conditions at all instants of time, which undermines the theory's claim to be fully cosmological, i.e., to apply to the Universe as a whole. A recent alternative formulation of Newtonian gravity due to Saunders (...)
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  • Recovering Recovery: On the Relationship between Gauge Symmetry and Trautman Recovery.Nicholas J. Teh - 2018 - Philosophy of Science 85 (2):201-224.
    This article uncovers a foundational relationship between the ‘gauge symmetry’ of a Newton-Cartan theory and the celebrated Trautman Recovery Theorem and explores its implications for recent philosophical work on Newton-Cartan gravitation.
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  • General-Relativistic Covariance.Neil Dewar - 2020 - Foundations of Physics 50 (4):294-318.
    This is an essay about general covariance, and what it says about spacetime structure. After outlining a version of the dynamical approach to spacetime theories, and how it struggles to deal with generally covariant theories, I argue that we should think about the symmetry structure of spacetime rather differently in generally-covariant theories compared to non-generally-covariant theories: namely, as a form of internal rather than external symmetry structure.
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  • The (un)detectability of absolute Newtonian masses.Niels C. M. Martens - 2019 - Synthese 198 (3):2511-2550.
    Absolutism about mass claims that mass ratios obtain in virtue of absolute masses. Comparativism denies this. Dasgupta, Oxford studies in metaphysics, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013) argues for comparativism about mass, in the context of Newtonian Gravity. Such an argument requires proving that comparativism is empirically adequate. Dasgupta equates this to showing that absolute masses are undetectable, and attempts to do so. This paper develops an argument by Baker to the contrary: absolute masses are in fact empirically meaningful, that is (...)
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  • Quine’s conjecture on many-sorted logic.Thomas William Barrett & Hans Halvorson - 2017 - Synthese 194 (9):3563-3582.
    Quine often argued for a simple, untyped system of logic rather than the typed systems that were championed by Russell and Carnap, among others. He claimed that nothing important would be lost by eliminating sorts, and the result would be additional simplicity and elegance. In support of this claim, Quine conjectured that every many-sorted theory is equivalent to a single-sorted theory. We make this conjecture precise, and prove that it is true, at least according to one reasonable notion of theoretical (...)
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  • Regularity Relationalism and the Constructivist Project.Syman Stevens - 2017 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science:axx037.
    ABSTRACT It has recently been argued that Harvey Brown and Oliver Pooley’s ‘dynamical approach’ to special relativity should be understood as what might be called an ontologically and ideologically relationalist approach to Minkowski geometry, according to which Minkowski geometrical structure supervenes upon the symmetries of the best-systems dynamical laws for a material world with primitive topological or differentiable structure. Fleshing out the details of some such primitive structure, and a conception of laws according to which Minkowski geometry could so supervene, (...)
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  • Conservation, inertia, and spacetime geometry.James Owen Weatherall - 2017 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 67:144-159.
    As Harvey Brown emphasizes in his book Physical Relativity, inertial motion in general relativity is best understood as a theorem, and not a postulate. Here I discuss the status of the "conservation condition", which states that the energy-momentum tensor associated with non-interacting matter is covariantly divergence-free, in connection with such theorems. I argue that the conservation condition is best understood as a consequence of the differential equations governing the evolution of matter in general relativity and many other theories. I conclude (...)
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  • Classical Spacetime Structure.James Owen Weatherall - 2022 - In Eleanor Knox & Alastair Wilson, The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Physics. London, UK: Routledge.
    I discuss several issues related to "classical" spacetime structure. I review Galilean, Newtonian, and Leibnizian spacetimes, and briefly describe more recent developments. The target audience is undergraduates and early graduate students in philosophy; the presentation avoids mathematical formalism as much as possible.
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  • Euclidean spacetime functionalism.James Read & Bryan Cheng - 2022 - Synthese 200 (6):1-22.
    We explore the significance of physical theories set in Euclidean spacetimes. In particular, we explore the use of these theories in contemporary physics at large, and the sense in which there can be a notion of temporal evolution in these theories. Having achieved these tasks, we proceed to reflect on the lessons that one can take from such theories for Knox’s ‘inertial frame’ version of spacetime functionalism, which seems to issue incorrect verdicts in the case of theories with Euclidean metrical (...)
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  • The Geometry of Conventionality.James Owen Weatherall & John Byron Manchak - 2014 - Philosophy of Science 81 (2):233-247.
    There is a venerable position in the philosophy of space and time that holds that the geometry of spacetime is conventional, provided one is willing to postulate a “universal force field.” Here we ask a more focused question, inspired by this literature: in the context of our best classical theories of space and time, if one understands “force” in the standard way, can one accommodate different geometries by postulating a new force field? We argue that the answer depends on one’s (...)
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  • Newtonian Equivalence Principles.James Read & Nicholas J. Teh - 2023 - Erkenntnis 88 (8):3479-3503.
    The equivalence principle has constituted one of the cornerstones of discussions in the foundations of spacetime theories over the past century. However, up to this point the principle has been considered overwhelmingly only within the context of relativistic physics. In this article, we demonstrate that the principle has much broader, super-theoretic significance: to do so, we present a unified framework for understanding the principle in its various guises, applicable to both relativistic and Newtonian contexts. We thereby deepen significantly our understanding (...)
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  • Metaphysics of Quantum Gravity.Baptiste Le Bihan, and & Annica Vieser - 2024 - Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Metaphysics of Quantum Gravity The metaphysics of quantum gravity explores metaphysical issues related to research programs in theoretical physics clustered under the term quantum gravity. These research programs aim at the formulation of a theory that reconciles the theory of general relativity with quantum theory. The goal is not necessarily to come up with a … Continue reading Metaphysics of Quantum Gravity →.
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  • A brief comment on Maxwell[-Huygens] spacetime.James Owen Weatherall - 2018 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 63:34-38.
    I provide an alternative characterization of a "standard of rotation" in the context of classical spacetime structure that does not refer to any covariant derivative operator.
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  • Newtonian gravitation in Maxwell spacetime.Elliott D. Chen - 2023 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 102 (C):22-30.
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  • Background Independence: Lessons for Further Decades of Dispute.Trevor Teitel - 2019 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 65:41-54.
    Background independence begins life as an informal property that a physical theory might have, often glossed as 'doesn't posit a fixed spacetime background'. Interest in trying to offer a precise account of background independence has been sparked by the pronouncements of several theorists working on quantum gravity that background independence embodies in some sense an essential discovery of the General Theory of Relativity, and a feature we should strive to carry forward to future physical theories. This paper has two goals. (...)
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  • Against Laplacian Reduction of Newtonian Mass to Spatiotemporal Quantities.Niels C. M. Martens - 2018 - Foundations of Physics 48 (5):591-609.
    Laplace wondered about the minimal choice of initial variables and parameters corresponding to a well-posed initial value problem. Discussions of Laplace’s problem in the literature have focused on choosing between spatiotemporal variables relative to absolute space or merely relative to other material bodies and between absolute masses or merely mass ratios. This paper extends these discussions of Laplace’s problem, in the context of Newtonian Gravity, by asking whether mass needs to be included in the initial state at all, or whether (...)
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  • What Is a Singularity in Geometrized Newtonian Gravitation?James Owen Weatherall - 2014 - Philosophy of Science 81 (5):1077-1089.
    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.
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  • Comparing the structures of mathematical objects.Isaac Wilhelm - 2021 - Synthese 199 (3-4):6357-6369.
    A popular method for comparing the structures of mathematical objects, which I call the ‘subset approach’, says that X has more structure than Y just in case X’s automorphisms form a proper subset of Y’s automorphisms. This approach is attractive, in part, because it seems to yield the right results in some comparisons of spacetime structure. But as I show, it yields the wrong results in a number of other cases. The problem is that the subset approach compares structure using (...)
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  • When scale is surplus.David Sloan & Sean Gryb - 2021 - Synthese 199 (5-6):14769-14820.
    We study a long-recognised but under-appreciated symmetry called dynamical similarity and illustrate its relevance to many important conceptual problems in fundamental physics. Dynamical similarities are general transformations of a system where the unit of Hamilton’s principal function is rescaled, and therefore represent a kind of dynamical scaling symmetry with formal properties that differ from many standard symmetries. To study this symmetry, we develop a general framework for symmetries that distinguishes the observable and surplus structures of a theory by using the (...)
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  • (1 other version)Isolation, not locality.Heather Demarest & Michael Townsen Hicks - 2020 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 103 (3):607-619.
    There is a long tradition of preferring local theories to ones that posit lawful or causal influence at a spacetime distance. In this paper, we argue against this preference. We argue that nonlocality is scientifically unobjectionable and that nonlocal theories can be known. Scientists can gather evidence for them and confirm them in much the same way that they do for local theories. We think these observations point to a deeper constraint on scientific theorizing and experimentation: the (quasi‐) isolation of (...)
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