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)

"The Analysis of Matter" is one of the earliest and best philosophical studies of the new physics of relativity and quantum mechanics.

The history of the publication of the gravitational field equations of general relativity in November 1915 by Einstein and Hilbert is briefly reviewed. An analysis of the internal structure and logic of Hilbert's theory as expounded in extant proofs and in the published version of his relevant paper is given with respect to the specific question what information would have been found on a missing piece of Hilbert's proofs. The existing texts suggest that the missing piece contained the explicit form (...) of the Riemann curvature scalar in terms of the Ricci tensor as a specification of the axiomatically underdetermined Lagrangian in Hilbert's action integral. An alternative reading that the missing piece of the proofs already may have contained the Einstein tensor, i.e. an explicit calculation of the gravitational part of Hilbert's Lagrangian is argued to be highly implausible. (shrink)

Although Eddington's philosophy of physics has been subjected to critical re-evaluation in recent years, neither the exact nature of his structuralist views nor his response to criticism by the likes of Braithwaite have been made clear. In this paper I trace, in particular, the incorporation into Eddington's structuralism of the non-classical indistinguishability of quantum objects. His metaphysical view of such objects as the product of group-theoretical analysis is crucial for understanding his response to Braithwaite's criticisms of the whole structuralist endeavor. (...) These criticisms closely resemble more recent attacks on structural realism in the philosophy of science. I conclude with a brief comparison between these more modern forms of structuralism and Eddington's. (shrink)