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This course aims at providing students with a better understanding of the physics of spacetime, the relationship between physics and philosophy, and the history and philosophy of science. It will focus on the philosophical foundation of spacetime physics, both classical and relativistic. This is an exceptional rich topic, for it has attracted great thinkers in science and philosophy, such as Descartes, Galileo, Newton, Leibniz, Kant, and Einstein. We will focus on many deep questions, including: Are space and time (or spacetime) genuine substances? Does time “flow”? What is the “shape” of space? Is time travel possible or paradoxical? Does quantum nonlocality conflict with relativity?
As Robert Geroch demonstrates, our perception of distance is always relative to our position in space. For persons situated outside the speculative realms of physics and mathematics, Geroch's tour from A to B is a thorough introduction to Einstein's theory of general relativity. The early chapters are devoted to the development and modifications the crucial notion of space-time undergoes as it passes through the Aristotelian and Galilean viewpoints. From theories of absolute space and absolute time, Geroch then details modern ideas of a space-time in which neither space nor time is absolute, showing how our everyday conceptions are inappropriate to the physical world in which we live.
This book collects classic readings that are generally accepted as the most significant contributions to the philosophy of space. The readings have been selected both on the basis of their relevance to recent debates on the nature of space and on the extent to which they carry premonitions of contemporary physics. In his detailed commentaries, Nick Huggett weaves together the readings and links them to our modern understanding of the subject. Together, the readings indicate the general historical development of the concept of space, and in his commentaries, Huggett explains their logical relations. He also uses our contemporary understanding of space to help clarify the key ideas of the texts.
This book introduces core philosophical issues surrounding the nature and structure of space and time. Tim Maudlin examines Aristotelian and Newtonian accounts of space and time, and traces how Galileo's conceptions of relativity and space-time led to Einstein's special and general theories of relativity. Maudlin explains special relativity using a geometrical approach emphasizing intrinsic space-time structure rather than coordinate systems of reference frames. Additional topics include the Twins Paradox, the physical aspects of the Lorentz-FitzGerald contraction, the constancy of the speed of light, time travel, the direction of time, and more.
This book concerns the radical transformation of our ideas about time in view of Einstein’s work on special and then general relativity. Classical topics, such as the Fitzgerald-Lorentz contraction, time dilation, simultaneity, twin paradox, mass and length changes, frames of reference, and space-time, are clearly explained. Mermin argues that special relativity should be taught in high school, and he writes the book imaging a high-school-level audience. For example, Mermin explains why dimensions shrink, time slows, and mass increases infinitely when near the speed of light. He begins with verbal descriptions of a frame of reference, and moves deeply into moving frames of the absolute constancy of the speed of light.
This book, explores the conceptual foundations of Einstein’s theory of relativity: the fascinating, yet tangled, web of philosophical, mathematical, and physical ideas that is the source of the theory’s enduring philosophical interest. It looks into the development of relativity to find a methodological property sufficient to distinguish good pieces of theoretical structure from bad, to help understand the difference between those aspects of geometrical structure retained by general relativity, such as the space-time manifold itself and the metrical tensor field defined thereon, and those aspects of geometrical structure abandoned by general relativity, such as absolute space, absolute time, gravitational acceleration, and so on.
