This book argues that the only kind of metaphysics that can contribute to objective knowledge is one based specifically on contemporary science as it really is, and not on philosophers' a priori intuitions, common sense, or simplifications of science. In addition to showing how recent metaphysics has drifted away from connection with all other serious scholarly inquiry as a result of not heeding this restriction, this book demonstrates how to build a metaphysics compatible with current fundamental physics, which, when combined (...) with metaphysics of the special sciences, can be used to unify physics with the other sciences without reducing these sciences to physics itself. Taking science metaphysically seriously, this book argues, means that metaphysicians must abandon the picture of the world as composed of self-subsistent individual objects, and the paradigm of causation as the collision of such objects. The text assesses the role of information theory and complex systems theory in attempts to explain the relationship between the special sciences and physics, treading a middle road between the grand synthesis of thermodynamics and information, and eliminativism about information. The consequences of the books' metaphysical theory for central issues in the philosophy of science are explored, including the implications for the realism versus empiricism debate, the role of causation in scientific explanations, the nature of causation and laws, the status of abstract and virtual objects, and the objective reality of natural kinds. (shrink)

Dieser Buchtitel ist Teil des Digitalisierungsprojekts Springer Book Archives mit Publikationen, die seit den Anfängen des Verlags von 1842 erschienen sind. Der Verlag stellt mit diesem Archiv Quellen für die historische wie auch die disziplingeschichtliche Forschung zur Verfügung, die jeweils im historischen Kontext betrachtet werden müssen. Dieser Titel erschien in der Zeit vor 1945 und wird daher in seiner zeittypischen politisch-ideologischen Ausrichtung vom Verlag nicht beworben.

Weyl’s original scale geometry of 1918 was withdrawn by its author from physical theorizing in the early 1920s. It made a surprising comeback, however, in the last third of the 20th century in several different contexts: scalar-tensor theories of gravity, foundations of space-time theories, foundations of quantum mechanics, elementary particle physics, and cosmology. It seems that Weyl geometry continues to offer an open window for research on the foundations of physics even after the turn into the new millenium.

This collection of original papers on the special and general theories of relativity constitutes an indispensable part of a library on relativity. Here are the 11 papers that forged the general and special theories of relativity: seven papers by Einstein, plus two papers by Lorentz and one each by Minkowski and Weyl.

The aim of this book is to give an account of Einstein's work without introducing anything very technical in the way of mathematics, physics, or philosophy.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

1929. The course of Gifford Lectures that Eddington delivered in the University of Edinburgh in January to March 1927.

The lectures have afforded me an opportunity of developing more fully than in my earlier books the principles of philosophic thought associated with the modern advances of physical science. It is often said that there is no "philosophy of ...

Fundamental Theory has been called an "unfinished symphony" and "a challenge to the musicians among natural philosophers of the future". This book, written in 1944 but left unfinished because Eddington died too soon, proved to be his final effort at a vision for harmonization of quantum physics and relativity. The work is less connected and internally integrated than 'Protons and Electrons' while representing a later point in the author's thought arc. The really interested student should read both books together.The physical (...) and mathematical reasoning are very deep, but it is possible to enjoy much of the flavor of the book even without following everything. The tidbits given below illustrate Eddington's beautiful and mellifluous English style. This edition contains a clickable table of contents and some interesting illustrations.WARNING: Due to the complexity of the mathematical typesetting, the only way to reproduce this book has been as a series of scanned page images. We believe this work is scientifically and culturally important, and despite a few imperfections and the inevitably small print, have brought it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of Eddington's work. On a portable electronic reader the pages come out pretty small, but they are legible. On a desktop computer running the Amazon app, they are perfectly fine. We appreciate your understanding, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.TIDBITS:The number of protons and electrons in the universe would, in itself, be merely a matter of idle curiosity. But N has a more general significance as a fundamental constant which enters into many physical formulae. Its special interpretation as the number of particles in the universe arises in the following way. If we consider a distribution of hydrogen in equilibrium at zero temperature, the presence of the matter produces a curvature of space, and the curvature causes the space to close when the number of particles contained in it reaches a certain total; that number is N. The present investigation seeks to determine N directly from the principles of measurement. We have to show, not that there are N particles in the universe, but that anyone who accepts certain elementary principles of measurement must, if he is consistent, think there are. We have to express in mathematical symbolism what we think we are doing when we measure things; for if we had no conception of what we were doing, the results of the measurements would not persuade us to believe anything in particular. All our results are derived from the condition that the conceptual interpretation which we place on the results of measurement must be consistent with our conceptual interpretation of the process of measurement.If we play about with a pin and a meter standard, we do not become aware of any number in particular unless the standard has been graduated, or unless we use a process of displacement which we interpret as adding pin-extensions. The fact is that, although measurement is primarily a process involving four entities, the conceptual interpretation of measurement postulates in addition the existence (in the structure contemplated) as something referred to as Z. The existence of Z is the condition that makes graduation an exact concept. In the actual universe there exists a basis which is uniform to a very high approximation, and this serves for almost all purposes; but to the much higher approximation required in the calculation of N the ideal exact basis of uniformity does not exist. The finitude of N is, in fact, the cause of the failure of the approximation.It must be remembered that we are now working to what would ordinarily be considered a fantastically high approximation. For ordinary purposes a measurable has 16 eigenvalues; but under the super-magnification here employed (which is not content to overlook 1 part in 10E39) there is a fine structure which splits each of them into 16 components. (shrink)

Written by the man considered the "Person of the Century" by Time magazine, this is not a glimpse into Einstein's personal life, but an extension and elaboration into his thinking on science. Two of the great theories of the physical world were created in the early 20th century: the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. Einstein created the theory of relativity and was also one of the founders of quantum theory. Here, Einstein describes the failure of classical mechanics and the (...) rise of the electromagnetic field, the theory of relativity, and of the quanta. Written in German by Einstein himself, the book is faced, page-by-page, with a translation by the noted Professor of Philosophy Paul Arthur Schilpp. (shrink)

Hermann Weyl was one of the early contributors to the mathematics of general relativity. This article argues that in 1929, for the formulation of a general relativistic framework of the Dirac equation, he both abolished and preserved in modified form the conceptual perspective that he had developed earlier in his “analysis of the problem of space.” The ideas of infinitesimal congruence from the early 1920s were aufgehoben in the general relativistic framework for the Dirac equation. He preserved the central idea (...) of gauge as a “purely infinitesimal” aspect of symmetries in a group extension schema. With respect to methodology, however, Weyl gave up his earlier preferences for relatively a-priori arguments and tried to incorporate as much empiricism as he could. This signified a clearly expressed empirical turn for him. Moreover, in this step he emphasized that the mathematical objects used for the representation of matter structures stood at the center of the construction, rather than interaction fields which, in the early 1920s, he had considered as more or less derivable from geometrico-philosophical considerations. (shrink)

This major publication is a history of the semantic tradition in philosophy from the early nineteenth century through its incarnation in the work of the Vienna Circle, the group of logical positivists that emerged in the years 1925–1935 in Vienna who were characterised by a strong commitment to empiricism, a high regard for science, and a conviction that modern logic is the primary tool of analytic philosophy. In the first part of the book, Alberto Coffa traces the roots of logical (...) positivism in a semantic tradition that arose in opposition to Kant's theory that a priori knowledge is based on pure intuition and the constitutive powers of the mind. In Part II, Coffa chronicles the development of this tradition by members and associates of the Vienna Circle. Much of Coffa's analysis draws on the unpublished notes and correspondence of many philosophers. The book, however, is not merely a history of the semantic tradition from Kant 'to the Vienna Station'. Coffa also critically reassesses the role of semantic notions in understanding the ground of a priori knowledge and its relation to empirical knowledge and questions the turn the tradition has taken since Vienna. (shrink)

Einstein proclaimed that we could discover true laws of nature by seeking those with the simplest mathematical formulation. He came to this viewpoint later in his life. In his early years and work he was quite hostile to this idea. Einstein did not develop his later Platonism from a priori reasoning or aesthetic considerations. He learned the canon of mathematical simplicity from his own experiences in the discovery of new theories, most importantly, his discovery of general relativity. Through his neglect (...) of the canon, he realised that he delayed the completion of general relativity by three years and nearly lost priority in discovery of its gravitational field equations. (shrink)

I argue that, contrary to folklore, Einstein never really cared for geometrizing the gravitational or the electromagnetic field; indeed, he thought that the very statement that General Relativity geometrizes gravity "is not saying anything at all". Instead, I shall show that Einstein saw the "unification" of inertia and gravity as one of the major achievements of General Relativity. Interestingly, Einstein did not locate this unification in the field equations but in his interpretation of the geodesic equation, the law of motion (...) of test particles. (shrink)

This paper attempts to show how the logical empiricists’ interpretation of the relation between geometry and reality emerges from a “collision” of mathematical traditions. Considering Riemann’s work as the initiator of a 19th century geometrical tradition, whose main protagonists were Helmholtz and Poincaré, the logical empiricists neglected the fact that Riemann’s revolutionary insight flourished instead in a non-geometrical tradition dominated by the works of Christoffel and Ricci-Curbastro roughly in the same years. I will argue that, in the attempt to interpret (...) general relativity as the last link of the chain Riemann–Helmholtz–Poincaré–Einstein, logical empiricists were led to argue that Einstein’s theory of gravitation mainly raised a problem of mathematical under-determination, i.e. the discovery that there are physical differences that cannot be expressed in the relevant mathematical structure of the theory. However, a historical reconstruction of the alternative Riemann–Christoffel–Ricci–Einstein line of evolution shows on the contrary that the main philosophical issue raised by Einstein’s theory was instead that of mathematical over-determination, i.e. the recognition of the presence of redundant mathematical differences that do not have any correspondence in physical reality. (shrink)

By inserting the dialogue between Einstein, Schlick and Reichenbach into a wider network of debates about the epistemology of geometry, this paper shows that not only did Einstein and Logical Empiricists come to disagree about the role, principled or provisional, played by rods and clocks in General Relativity, but also that in their lifelong interchange, they never clearly identified the problem they were discussing. Einstein’s reflections on geometry can be understood only in the context of his ”measuring rod objection” against (...) Weyl. On the contrary, Logical Empiricists, though carefully analyzing the Einstein–Weyl debate, tried to interpret Einstein’s epistemology of geometry as a continuation of the Helmholtz–Poincaré debate by other means. The origin of the misunderstanding, it is argued, should be found in the failed appreciation of the difference between a “Helmholtzian” and a “Riemannian” tradition. The epistemological problems raised by General Relativity are extraneous to the first tradition and can only be understood in the context of the latter, the philosophical significance of which, however, still needs to be fully explored. (shrink)

In his book Philosophie der Raum-Zeit-Lehre (1928) Reichenbach introduced the concept of universal force. Reichenbach's use of this concept was later severely criticized by Grünbaum. In this article it is argued that although Grünbaum's criticism is correct in an important respect, it misses part of Reichenbach's intentions. An attempt is made to clarify and defend Reichenbach's position, and to show that universal force is a useful notion in the physically important case of gravitation.

Albert Einstein was the most influential physicist of the twentieth century. Less well-known is that fundamental philosophical problems, such as concept formation, the role of epistemology in developing and explaining the character of physical theories, and the debate between positivism and realism, played a central role in his thought as a whole. Thomas Ryckman shows that already at the beginning of his career, at a time when the twin pillars of classical physics, Newtonian mechanics and Maxwell’s electromagnetism, were known to (...) have but limited validity, Einstein sought to advance physical theory by positing certain physical principles as secure footholds. That philosophy produced his greatest triumph, the general theory of relativity, and his greatest failure, an unwillingness to accept quantum mechanics. This book shows that Einstein’s philosophy grew from a lifelong aspiration for a unified theoretical representation encompassing all physical phenomena. It also considers how Einstein’s theories of relativity and criticisms of quantum theory have shaped the course of twentieth-century philosophy of science. Including a chronology, glossary, chapter summaries, and suggestions for further reading, _Einstein_ is an ideal introduction to this iconic figure in twentieth-century science and philosophy. It is essential reading for students of philosophy of science, and also suitable for those working in related areas such as physics, history of science, or intellectual history. (shrink)

This volume is the first systematic presentation of the work of Albert Einstein, comprising fourteen essays by leading historians and philosophers of science that introduce readers to his work. Following an introduction that places Einstein's work in the context of his life and times, the book opens with essays on the papers of Einstein's 'miracle year', 1905, covering Brownian motion, light quanta, and special relativity, as well as his contributions to early quantum theory and the opposition to his light quantum (...) hypothesis. Further essays relate Einstein's path to the general theory of relativity and the beginnings of two fields it spawned, relativistic cosmology and gravitational waves. Essays on Einstein's later years examine his unified field theory program and his critique of quantum mechanics. The closing essays explore the relation between Einstein's work and twentieth-century philosophy, as well as his political writings. (shrink)

Based upon the proceedings of the First International Conference on the History of General Relativity, held at Boston University's Osgood Hill Conference Center, North Andover, Massachusetts, 8-11 May 1986, this volume brings together essays by twelve prominent historians and philosophers of science and physicists. The topics range from the development of general relativity (John Norton, John Stachel) and its early reception (Carlo Cattani, Michelangelo De Maria, Anne Kox), through attempts to understand the physical implications of the theory (Jean Eisenstaedt, Peter (...) Havas) and to quantize it (Peter G. Bergmann), to elaborations of the theory into a unified theory of electromagnetism and gravitation (Vladimir P. Vizgin, Michel Biezunski), and considerations of its cosmological extensions (Pierre Kerszberg, George F.R. Ellis). This is the first volume to survey many of the most important questions in the history of general relativity, with many of the contributions drawing upon such original resources as the Einstein Archive. It is hoped that it will stimulate much-needed further research in this hitherto neglected area. (shrink)

Excerpt from Raum und Zeit in der Gegenwartigen Physik: Zur Einfuhrung in das Verstandnis der Relativitats-und Gravitationstheorie Die in dieser Schrift behandelte physikalische Theorie hat seit dem Erscheinen der zweiten Auflage eine wahr haft glanzende Bestatigung durch astronomische Beobach tungen gefunden (vergl. S. Sie hat dadurch die all gemeine Aufmerksamkeit in hohem Mae auf sich gelenkt und den Ruhm ihres Schopfers Einstein in noch hellerem Glanze erstrahlen lassen. So wird die grundlegende Be deutung der Relativitatstheorie fur unsere gesamte Natur auffassung (...) immer mehr von allen Seiten anerkannt, und es ist kein Zweifel, da sie binnen kurzem als Allgemeingut menschlich-wissenschaftlicher Weltanschauung gelten wird. Freilich, die Zahl derer, die diese erstaunliche Schopfung genialer Geisteskraft bewundern, ist weit schneller ge wachsen als die Zahl derer, die sie wirklich restlos ver stehen, und so hat sich das Bedurfnis nach aufklarenden Darstellungen der Grundlagen der Theorie nicht vermindert, sondern ist im Gegenteil im Steigen begriffen. Das zeigt sich auch darin, da die zweite Ausgabe dieser Schrift trotz hoherer Auflageziffer noch schneller erschopft war als die erste. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

Die Relativitatstheorien (RT) Einsteins gehoren zu den meistdiskutierten Theorien der Physik des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts. Nach der Formulie­ rung der sog. 'speziellen Relativitatstheorie' (SRT) im Jahr 1905 nah­ men zunachst nur einige Spezialisten von ihr Kenntnis, bis mit ungefiihr fiinf Jahren Verspatung dann auch zunehmend Nicht-Physiker sich mit ihr zu beschaftigen begannen, angeregt durch populiirwissenschaftliche, all­ gemeinverstiindliche 'Einfiihrungen' von Kollegen Einsteins wie z. B. Paul Langevin in Frankreich oder Max von Laue in Deutschland. Diese Pha­ senverschiebung zwischen fachwissenschaftlichem Ausbau der Theorie (...) und offentlicher Notiznahme wiederholte sich bei Einsteins 'allgemeiner Theorie der Relativitat und Gravitation' (ART). Zwischen 1913 und 1915 in ihren wesentlichen Ziigen ausformuliert, wurde sie erst nach einer spektakuliiren experimentellen Bestatigung im Jahr 1919 einem breiterem Publikum be­ kannt. In meiner Arbeit werde ich den Facettenreichtum der Ausdeutungen, die beide RT erfuhren, zunachst zu referieren und durch repriisentative Zi­ tate aus der Literatur der Zeit zu belegen haben. Der Umfang dieser Arbeit geht wesentlich auf das Konto dieser ausgewahlten Belege - davon verspre­ che ich mir, dafi nicht nur bislang unveroffentlichte Dokumente, sondern auch entlegene Texte hier in ihren zentralen Passagen leicht zuganglich ge­ macht werden. Fernerhin werde ich aber auch zu analysieren haben, warum derartig vielfaltige, einander mitunter diametral entgegengesetzte Interpre­ tationen einer wissenschaftlichen Theorie vorgelegt wurden. (shrink)

Universally recognized as bringing about a revolutionary transformation of the notions of space, time, and motion in physics, Einstein's theory of gravitation, known as "general relativity," was also a defining event for 20th century philosophy of science. During the decisive first ten years of the theory's existence, two main tendencies dominated its philosophical reception. This book is an extended argument that the path actually taken, which became logical empiricist philosophy of science, greatly contributed to the current impasse over realism, whereas (...) new possibilities are opened in revisiting and reviving the spirit of the more sophisticated tendency, a cluster of viewpoints broadly termed transcendental idealism, and furthering its articulation. It also emerges that Einstein, while paying lip service to the emerging philosophy of logical empiricism, ended up siding de facto with the latter tendency. Ryckman's work speaks to several groups, among them philosophers of science and historians of relativity. Equations are displayed as necessary, but Ryckman gives the non-mathematical reader enough background to understand their occurrence in the context of his wider philosophical project. (shrink)

iinstein oered the prin™iple of gener—l ™ov—ri—n™e —s the fund—ment—l physi™—l prin™iple of his gener—l theory of rel—tivityD —nd —s responsi˜le for extending the prin™iple of rel—tivity to —™™eler—ted motionF „his view w—s disputed —lmost immedi—tely with the ™ounterE™l—im th—t the prin™iple w—s no rel—tivity prin™iple —nd w—s physi™—lly v—™uousF „he dis—greeE ment persists tod—yF „his —rti™le reviews the development of iinstein9s thought on gener—l ™ov—ri—n™eD its rel—tion to the found—tions of gener—l rel—tivity —nd the evolution of the ™ontinuing de˜—te (...) over his viewpointF.. (shrink)