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  1. The nontriviality of trivial general covariance: How electrons restrict ‘time’ coordinates, spinors fit into tensor calculus, and of a tetrad is surplus structure.J. Brian Pitts - 2012 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 43 (1):1-24.
    It is a commonplace in the philosophy of physics that any local physical theory can be represented using arbitrary coordinates, simply by using tensor calculus. On the other hand, the physics literature often claims that spinors \emph{as such} cannot be represented in coordinates in a curved space-time. These commonplaces are inconsistent. What general covariance means for theories with fermions, such as electrons, is thus unclear. In fact both commonplaces are wrong. Though it is not widely known, Ogievetsky and Polubarinov constructed (...)
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  • Quantum Gravity.Carlo Rovelli - 2004 - Cambridge University Press.
    Quantum gravity poses the problem of merging quantum mechanics and general relativity, the two great conceptual revolutions in the physics of the twentieth century. The loop and spinfoam approach, presented in this book, is one of the leading research programs in the field. The first part of the book discusses the reformulation of the basis of classical and quantum Hamiltonian physics required by general relativity. The second part covers the basic technical research directions. Appendices include a detailed history of the (...)
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  • Classical Mechanics Is Lagrangian; It Is Not Hamiltonian.Erik Curiel - 2014 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 65 (2):269-321.
    One can (for the most part) formulate a model of a classical system in either the Lagrangian or the Hamiltonian framework. Though it is often thought that those two formulations are equivalent in all important ways, this is not true: the underlying geometrical structures one uses to formulate each theory are not isomorphic. This raises the question of whether one of the two is a more natural framework for the representation of classical systems. In the event, the answer is yes: (...)
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  • Gauge-invariant localization of infinitely many gravitational energies from all possible auxiliary structures.J. Brian Pitts - unknown
    The problem of finding a covariant expression for the distribution and conservation of gravitational energy-momentum dates to the 1910s. A suitably covariant infinite-component localization is displayed, reflecting Bergmann's realization that there are infinitely many gravitational energy-momenta. Initially use is made of a flat background metric (or rather, all of them) or connection, because the desired gauge invariance properties are obvious. Partial gauge-fixing then yields an appropriate covariant quantity without any background metric or connection; one version is the collection of pseudotensors (...)
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  • (2 other versions)Proof of an external world.George Edward Moore - 1939 - Proceedings of the British Academy 25 (5):273--300.
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  • On the emergence of time in quantum gravity.Jeremy Butterfield & Chris Isham - 1999 - In The Arguments of Time. New York: Oup/British Academy. pp. 111--168.
    We discuss from a philosophical perspective the way in which the normal concept of time might be said to `emerge' in a quantum theory of gravity. After an introduction, we briefly discuss the notion of emergence, without regard to time. We then introduce the search for a quantum theory of gravity ; and review some general interpretative issues about space, time and matter. We then discuss the emergence of time in simple quantum geometrodynamics, and in the Euclidean approach. Section 6 (...)
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  • (2 other versions)The unreality of time.John Ellis McTaggart - 1908 - Mind 17 (68):457-474.
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  • Thoroughly muddled Mctaggart: Or, how to abuse gauge freedom to create metaphysical monostrosities.Tim Maudlin - 2002 - Philosophers' Imprint 2:1-23.
    It has long been a commonplace that there is a problem understanding the role of time when one tries to quantize the General Theory of Relativity (GTR). In his "Thoroughly Modern McTaggart" (Philosophers' Imprint Vol 2, No. 3), John Earman presents several arguments to the conclusion that there is a problem understanding change and the passage of time in the unadorned GTR, quite apart from quantization. His Young McTaggart argues that according to the GTR, no physical magnitude ever changes. A (...)
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  • Thoroughly modern Mctaggart: Or, what Mctaggart would have said if he had read the general theory of relativity.John Earman - 2002 - Philosophers' Imprint 2:1-28.
    The philosophical literature on time and change is fixated on the issue of whether the B-series account of change is adequate or whether real change requires Becoming of either the property-based variety of McTaggart's A-series or the non-property-based form embodied in C. D. Broad's idea of the piling up of successive layers of existence. For present purposes it is assumed that the B-series suffices to ground real change. But then it is noted that modern science in the guise of Einstein's (...)
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  • What price spacetime substantivalism? The hole story.John Earman & John Norton - 1987 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 38 (4):515-525.
    Spacetime substantivalism leads to a radical form of indeterminism within a very broad class of spacetime theories which include our best spacetime theory, general relativity. Extending an argument from Einstein, we show that spacetime substantivalists are committed to very many more distinct physical states than these theories' equations can determine, even with the most extensive boundary conditions.
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  • Proof of an External World.G. E. Moore - 1939 - H. Milford.
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  • The Metaphysics of Space-Time Substantivalism.Carl Hoefer - 1996 - Journal of Philosophy 93 (1):5-27.
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  • Substances and space-time: What Aristotle would have said to Einstein.Tim Maudlin - 1990 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 21 (4):531-561.
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  • A First Class Constraint Generates Not a Gauge Transformation, But a Bad Physical Change: The Case of Electromagnetism.J. Brian Pitts - unknown
    In Dirac-Bergmann constrained dynamics, a first-class constraint typically does not _alone_ generate a gauge transformation. By direct calculation it is found that each first-class constraint in Maxwell's theory generates a change in the electric field E by an arbitrary gradient, spoiling Gauss's law. The secondary first-class constraint p^i,_i=0 still holds, but being a function of derivatives of momenta, it is not directly about E. Only a special combination of the two first-class constraints, the Anderson-Bergmann -Castellani gauge generator G, leaves E (...)
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  • (1 other version)Time in quantum gravity.Nick Huggett, Tiziana Vistarini & Christian Wuthrich - 2012 - .
    Quantum gravity--the marriage of quantum physics with general relativity--is bound to contain deep and important lessons for the nature of physical time. Some of these lessons shall be canvassed here, particularly as they arise from quantum general relativity and string theory and related approaches. Of particular interest is the question of which of the intuitive aspects of time will turn out to be fundamental, and which 'emergent' in some sense.
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  • Foundations and current problems of general relativity (notes by graham dixon, petros florides and gerald lemmer).Andrzej Trautman - 1965 - In A. Trautman (ed.), Lectures on general relativity. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.,: Prentice-Hall. pp. 1--1.
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  • “Forget time”: Essay written for the FQXi contest on the Nature of Time.Carlo Rovelli - 2011 - Foundations of Physics 41 (9):1475-1490.
    Following a line of research that I have developed for several years, I argue that the best strategy for understanding quantum gravity is to build a picture of the physical world where the notion of time plays no role at all. I summarize here this point of view, explaining why I think that in a fundamental description of nature we must “forget time”, and how this can be done in the classical and in the quantum theory. The idea is to (...)
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  • Symplectic Reduction and the Problem of Time in Nonrelativistic Mechanics.Karim P. Y. Thébault - 2012 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 63 (4):789-824.
    Symplectic reduction is a formal process through which degeneracy within the mathematical representations of physical systems displaying gauge symmetry can be controlled via the construction of a reduced phase space. Typically such reduced spaces provide us with a formalism for representing both instantaneous states and evolution uniquely and for this reason can be justifiably afforded the status of fun- damental dynamical arena - the otiose structure having been eliminated from the original phase space. Essential to the application of symplectic reduction (...)
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  • The meaning of general covariance.John Stachel - 1993 - In John Earman (ed.), Philosophical Problems of the Internal and External World. University of Pittsburgh Press. pp. 129--60.
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  • From metaphysics to physics.Gordon Belot & John Earman - 1999 - In Jeremy Butterfield & Constantine Pagonis (eds.), From Physics to Philosophy. Cambridge University Press. pp. 166--86.
    We discuss the relationship between the interpretative problems of quantum gravity and those of general relativity. We argue that classical and quantum theories of gravity resuscitate venerable philosophical questions about the nature of space, time, and change; and that the resolution of some of the difficulties facing physicists working on quantum theories of gravity would appear to require philosophical as well as scientific creativity.
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  • Pre-socratic quantum gravity.Gordon Belot & John Earman - unknown - In Craig Callender & Nicholas Huggett (eds.), Physics meets philosophy at the planck scale. pp. 213--55.
    Physicists who work on canonical quantum gravity will sometimes remark that the general covariance of general relativity is responsible for many of the thorniest technical and conceptual problems in their field.1 In particular, it is sometimes alleged that one can trace to this single source a variety of deep puzzles about the nature of time in quantum gravity, deep disagreements surrounding the notion of ‘observable’ in classical and quantum gravity, and deep questions about the nature of the existence of spacetime (...)
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  • Time and Structure in Canonical Gravity.Dean Rickles - 2006 - In Dean Rickles, Steven French & Juha T. Saatsi (eds.), The Structural Foundations of Quantum Gravity. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
    In this paper I wish to make some headway on understanding what \emph{kind} of problem the ``problem of time'' is, and offer a possible resolution---or, rather, a new way of understanding an old resolution. The response I give is a variation on a theme of Rovelli's \emph{evolving constants of motion} strategy. I argue that by giving correlation strategies a \emph{structuralist} basis, a number of objections to the standard account can be blunted. Moreover, I show that the account I offer provides (...)
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  • Symmetry and gauge freedom.Gordon Belot - 2002 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 34 (2):189-225.
    The classical field theories that underlie the quantum treatments of the electromagnetic, weak, and strong forces share a peculiar feature: specifying the initial state of the field determines the evolution of some degrees of freedom of the theory while leaving the evolution of some others wholly arbitrary. This strongly suggests that some of the variables of the standard state space lack physical content-intuitively, the space of states of such a theory is of higher dimension than the corresponding space of genuine (...)
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  • Change without change, and how to observe it in general relativity.Richard Healey - 2004 - Synthese 141 (3):381 - 415.
    All change involves temporal variation of properties. There is change in the physical world only if genuine physical magnitudes take on different values at different times. I defend the possibility of change in a general relativistic world against two skeptical arguments recently presented by John Earman. Each argument imposes severe restrictions on what may count as a genuine physical magnitude in general relativity. These restrictions seem justified only as long as one ignores the fact that genuine change in a relativistic (...)
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  • (2 other versions)Relativity: The Special and the General Theory.Albert Einstein - 2001 - Routledge.
    Time magazine's "Man of the Century", Albert Einstein is the founder of modern physics and his theory of relativity is the most important scientific idea of the modern era. In this short book, Einstein explains, using the minimum of mathematical terms, the basic ideas and principles of the theory that has shaped the world we live in today. Unsurpassed by any subsequent books on relativity, this remains the most popular and useful exposition of Einstein's immense contribution to human knowledge. With (...)
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  • Spacetime and the philosophical challenge of quantum gravity.Jeremy Butterfield & Chris Isham - 2001 - In Jeremy Butterfield & Chris Isham (eds.), Physics Meets Philosophy at the Panck Scale. Cambridge University Press.
    We survey some philosophical aspects of the search for a quantum theory of gravity, emphasising how quantum gravity throws into doubt the treatment of spacetime common to the two `ingredient theories' (quantum theory and general relativity), as a 4-dimensional manifold equipped with a Lorentzian metric. After an introduction (Section 1), we briefly review the conceptual problems of the ingredient theories (Section 2) and introduce the enterprise of quantum gravity (Section 3). We then describe how three main research programmes in quantum (...)
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  • The representation of time and change in mechanics.Gordon Belot - 2006 - In Jeremy Butterfield & John Earman (eds.), Philosophy of Physics. Amsterdam and Boston: Elsevier. pp. 133--227.
    This chapter is concerned with the representation of time and change in classical (i.e., non-quantum) physical theories. One of the main goals of the chapter is to attempt to clarify the nature and scope of the so-called problem of time: a knot of technical and interpretative problems that appear to stand in the way of attempts to quantize general relativity, and which have their roots in the general covariance of that theory. The most natural approach to these questions is via (...)
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  • Can Physics Coherently Deny the Reality of Time?Richard Healey - 2002 - Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 50:293-.
    The conceptual and technical difficulties involved in creating a quantum theory of gravity have led some physicists to question, and even in some cases to deny, the reality of time. More surprisingly, this denial has found a sympathetic audience among certain philosophers of physics. What should we make of these wild ideas? Does it even make sense to deny the reality of time? In fact physical science has been chipping away at common sense aspects of time ever since its inception. (...)
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  • (2 other versions)The Unreality of Time.J. Ellis McTaggart - 1908 - Philosophical Review 18:466.
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  • Out of the Labyrinth: Einstein, Hertz and Göttingen Answer to the Hole Argument.John D. Norton & Don Howard - 1982 - In John Norton (ed.).
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  • Three denials of time in the interpretation of canonical gravity.Karim P. Y. Thébault - 2012 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 43 (4):277-294.
    The analysis of the temporal structure of canonical general relativity and the connected interpretational questions with regard to the role of time within the theory both rest upon the need to respect the fundamentally dual role of the Hamiltonian constraints found within the formalism. Any consistent philosophical approach towards the theory must pay dues to the role of these constraints in both generating dynamics, in the context of phase space, and generating unphysical symmetry transformations, in the context of a hypersurface (...)
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  • Einstein, the Hole Argument and the Reality of Space.John D. Norton - 1982 - In John Norton (ed.).
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  • The timelessness of quantum gravity: II. The appearance of dynamics in static configurations.Julian B. Barbour - 1994 - Classical and Quantum Gravity 11:2875--97.
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  • Understanding electromagnetism.Gordon Belot - 1998 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 49 (4):531-555.
    It is often said that the Aharonov-Bohm effect shows that the vector potential enjoys more ontological significance than we previously realized. But how can a quantum-mechanical effect teach us something about the interpretation of Maxwell's theory—let alone about the ontological structure of the world—when both theories are false? I present a rational reconstruction of the interpretative repercussions of the Aharonov-Bohm effect, and suggest some morals for our conception of the interpretative enterprise.
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  • On Dirac's incomplete analysis of gauge transformations.Josep M. Pons - 2005 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 36 (3):491-518.
    Dirac's approach to gauge symmetries is discussed. We follow closely the steps that led him from his conjecture concerning the generators of gauge transformations {\it at a given time} ---to be contrasted with the common view of gauge transformations as maps from solutions of the equations of motion into other solutions--- to his decision to artificially modify the dynamics, substituting the extended Hamiltonian for the total Hamiltonian. We show in detail that Dirac's analysis was incomplete and, in completing it, we (...)
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  • Moore and ordinary language.Norman Malcolm - 1964 - In Vere Claiborne Chappell (ed.), Ordinary language: essays in philosophical method. New York: Dover Publications.
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  • Absolute objects and counterexamples: Jones--Geroch dust, Torretti constant curvature, tetrad-spinor, and scalar density.J. Brian Pitts - 2006 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 37:347-71.
    James L. Anderson analyzed the novelty of Einstein's theory of gravity as its lack of "absolute objects." Michael Friedman's related work has been criticized by Roger Jones and Robert Geroch for implausibly admitting as absolute the timelike 4-velocity field of dust in cosmological models in Einstein's theory. Using the Rosen-Sorkin Lagrange multiplier trick, I complete Anna Maidens's argument that the problem is not solved by prohibiting variation of absolute objects in an action principle. Recalling Anderson's proscription of "irrelevant" variables, I (...)
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  • The hole truth.Jeremy Butterfield - 1989 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 40 (1):1-28.
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