Kretschmann’s Analysis of Covariance and Relativity Principles

Rynasiewicz, Robert

doi:10.1007/978-1-4612-0639-2_13

Cited by 51 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…On 14 August 1917, only several months after the appearance of the first edition of Schlick's booklet, the Annalen der Physik received the manuscript of a second paper of Kretschmann's, which was dated 6 August: Über den physikalischen Sinn der Relativitätspostulate, A. Einsteins neue und seine ursprüngliche Relativitätsthe-orie (Kretschmann, 1918). The paper -"rediscovered" by James L. Anderson in the mid-1960s (Anderson, 1964, 184;Anderson, 1967, § 10.3) -was destined to become a classic and has therefore been widely discussed in the historical and philosophical literature (Norton, 1995;Rynasiewicz, 1999;Norton, 2003;Pitts, 2008). However, less importance has been given to a comparison between Kretschmann's first and second papers, an issue which will be insisted on here.…”

Section: Kretschmann After Einstein: the Triviality Of The "Public" Pmentioning

confidence: 99%

Erich Kretschmann as a proto-logical-empiricist: Adventures and misadventures of the point-coincidence argument

Giovanelli

2013

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in

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The present paper attempts to show that a 1915 article by Erich Kretschmann must be credited not only for being the source of Einstein's point-coincidence remark, but also for having anticipated the main lines of the logical-empiricist interpretation of general relativity. Whereas Kretschmann was inspired by the work of Mach and Poincaré, Einstein inserted Kretschmann's point-coincidence parlance into the context of Ricci and Levi-Civita's absolute differential calculus. Kretschmann himself realized this and turned the point-coincidence argument against Einstein in his second and more famous 1918 paper. While Einstein had taken nothing from Kretschmann but the expression "point-coincidences", the logical empiricists, however, instinctively dragged along with it the entire apparatus of Kretschmann's conventionalism. Disappointingly, in their interpretation of general relativity, the logical empiricists unwittingly replicated some epistemological remarks Kretschmann had written before General Relativity even existed.

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Section: Kretschmann After Einstein: the Triviality Of The "Public" Pmentioning

confidence: 99%

Erich Kretschmann as a proto-logical-empiricist: Adventures and misadventures of the point-coincidence argument

Giovanelli

2013

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in

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“…The principle of general covariance as complete coordinate generality in the formulation of a physical theory, has no particular physical content, and thus it has nothing to do with a principle of relativity. In fact according to Ricci and Levi-Civita's investigations (Kretschmann, 1917, 579) every space-time theory can be formulated in a general co-variant way, only by inserting the g µν ad the Γ τ µν into the equations of the theory (more on this topic Rynasiewicz, 1999;Norton, 2003).…”

Section: Generally Covariant Field Equations In the Meantime The Thementioning

confidence: 99%

The Forgotten Tradition: How the Logical Empiricists Missed the Philosophical Significance of the Work of Riemann, Christoffel and Ricci

Giovanelli

2012

Erkenn

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“…ii) those generated by the three super-momentum constraints induce a transition on Σ τ from a given 3-coordinate system to another one; iii) that generated by the super-hamiltonian constraint induces a transition from a given 3+1 splitting of M 4 to another, by operating normal deformations [39] of the space-like hyper-surfaces 20 .…”

Section: B Hamiltonian Gauge Transformationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…19 Note that the off-shell Hamiltonian gauge transformations are local Noether transformations (second Noether theorem) under which the ADM Lagrangian (3.1) is quasi-invariant. 20 Note that in compact space-times the super-hamiltonian constraint is usually interpreted as generator of the evolution in some internal time, either like York's internal extrinsic time or like Misner's internal intrinsic time. In this paper instead the super-hamiltonian constraint is the generator of those Hamiltonian iv) those generated by the three rest-frame constraints (3.5) can be interpreted as a change of centroid to be used as origin of the 3-coordinates.…”

Section: B Hamiltonian Gauge Transformationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The physical role of gravitational and gauge degrees of freedom in general relativity — I: Dynamical synchronization and generalized inertial effects

Lusanna

Pauri

2006

Gen Relativ Gravit

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This is the first of a couple of papers in which the peculiar capabilities of the Hamiltonian approach to general relativity are exploited to get both new results concerning specific technical issues, and new insights about old foundational problems of the theory. The first paper includes:1) a critical analysis of the various concepts of symmetry related to the Einstein-Hilbert Lagrangian viewpoint on the one hand, and to the Hamiltonian viewpoint, on the other. This analysis leads, in particular, to a re-interpretation of active diffeomorphisms as passive and metric-dependent dynamical symmetries of Einstein's equations, a re-interpretation which enables to disclose the (up to now unknown) connection of a subgroup of them to Hamiltonian gauge transformations on-shell;2) a re-visitation of the canonical reduction of the ADM formulation of general relativity, with particular emphasis on the geometro-dynamical effects of the gauge-fixing procedure, which amounts to the definition of a global (non-inertial) space-time laboratory. This analysis discloses the peculiar dynamical nature that the traditional definition of distant simultaneity and clocksynchronization assume in general relativity, as well as the gauge relatedness of the "conventions" which generalize the classical Einstein's convention.3) a clarification of the physical role of Dirac and gauge variables, as their being related to tidallike and generalized inertial effects, respectively. This clarification is mainly due to the fact that, unlike the standard formulations of the equivalence principle, the Hamiltonian formalism allows to define a generalized notion of "force" in general relativity in a natural way;

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Kretschmann’s Analysis of Covariance and Relativity Principles

Cited by 51 publications

References 10 publications

Erich Kretschmann as a proto-logical-empiricist: Adventures and misadventures of the point-coincidence argument

Erich Kretschmann as a proto-logical-empiricist: Adventures and misadventures of the point-coincidence argument

The Forgotten Tradition: How the Logical Empiricists Missed the Philosophical Significance of the Work of Riemann, Christoffel and Ricci

The physical role of gravitational and gauge degrees of freedom in general relativity — I: Dynamical synchronization and generalized inertial effects

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