As I have read the scholium, it divides into three main parts, not including the introductory paragraph. The first consists of paragraphs one to four in which Newton sets out his characterizations of absolute and relative time, space, place, and motion. Although some justificatory material is included here, notably in paragraph three, the second part is reserved for the business of justifying the characterizations he has presented. The main object is to adduce grounds for believing that the absolute quantities are (...) indeed distinct from their relative measures and are not reducible to them. Paragraph five takes this up for the case of time. Paragraphs eight to twelve endeavor to do this for rest and motion by appealing to their properties, causes and effects. In arguing that absolute motion is not reducible to any particular form of the relative motion of bodies with respect to one another, and thus, as is directly argued in the third argument, must be understood in terms of motionless places, Newton thereby constructs an indirect case that absolute space is indeed something distinct from any relative space. Paragraph thirteen functions as conclusion to this line of inquiry and comments on how, in the light of this, the names of these quantities are to be interpreted in the scriptures. The third and final part consists of paragraph fourteen alone, and addresses the question: given that true motion is motion with respect to absolute space, but the parts of the latter are not perceivable, is it possible for us to know the true motions of individual bodies? Newton illustrates how this may be done from the evidence provided by their apparent motions and the forces which are the causes and effects of true motion. This forms a bridge to the body of the work insofar as the purpose of the Principia, according to Newton, is to show how this, and the converse problem, of inferring true and apparent motions from the forces, can be dealt with.Part II of this paper will appear in the next issue of Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. (shrink)

In a number of publications, John Earman has advocated a tertium quid to the usual dichotomy between substantivalism and relationism concerning the nature of spacetime. The idea is that the structure common to the members of an equivalence class of substantival models is captured by a Leibniz algebra which can then be taken to directly characterize the intrinsic reality only indirectly represented by the substantival models. An alleged virtue of this is that, while a substantival interpretation of spacetime theories falls (...) prey to radical local indeterminism, the Leibniz algebras do not. I argue that the program of Leibniz algebras is subject to radical local indeterminism to the same extent as substantivalism. In fact, for the category of topological spaces of interest in spacetime physics, the program is equivalent to the original spacetime approach. Moreover, the motivation for the program--that isomorphic substantival models should be regarded as representing the same physical situation--is misguided. (shrink)

As is well know from Einstein the choice of a criterion for distant simultaneity is equivalent to stipulating one-way speeds for the transit of light. It is shown that any choice of non-standard synchrony is equivalent to a Lorentz local time boost. From this and considerations from the hole argument, it follows that there is a non-trivial sense in which distant simultaneity is conventional, at least to the extent that the “gauge freedom” arising in the hole argument is non-trivial.

After some background setting in which it is shown how Maudlin's (1989, 1990) response to the hole argument of Earman and Norton (1987) is related to that of Rynasiewicz (1994), it is argued that the syntactic proposals of Mundy (1992) and of Leeds (1995), which claim to dismiss the hole argument as an uninteresting blunder, are inadequate. This leads to a discussion of how the responses of Maudlin and Rynasiewicz relate to issues about gauge freedom and relativity principles.

One of the issues dividing "absolutists" and "relationists" is the question whether all motion is relative motion or, in the words of Earman, spacetime has "structures that support absolute quantities of motion." This paper argues that, despite the enormous literature bearing on the topic, it is problematic to formulate a general criterion for when a quantity counts as absolute in contrast to merely relative in a way that is not hopelessly parasitic on other, presumably distinct, senses of "absolute." Furthermore, I (...) suggest that the vicissitudes of the evolution of the concept of absolute motion have contributed to this difficulty. (shrink)

What is science, and what is it not? Is falsifiability the key to drawing this line? How and why does science work? Should we worry whether science is talking about a "real" world? And should we stop thinking there is a single thing we can call "the scientific method"? With Deborah Mayo, Robert Rynasiewicz, and Drew Arrowood.

Isaac Newton founded classical mechanics on the view that space is something distinct from body and that time is something that passes uniformly without regard to whatever happens in the world. For this reason he spoke of absolute space and absolute time, so as to distinguish these entities from the various ways by which we measure them (which he called relative spaces and relative times). From antiquity into the eighteenth century, contrary views which denied that space and time are real (...) entities maintained that the world is necessarily a material plenum. Concerning space, they held that the idea of empty space is a conceptual impossibility. Space is nothing but an abstraction we use to compare different arrangements of the bodies constituting the plenum. Concerning time, they insisted, there can be no lapse of time without change occurring somewhere. Time is merely a measure of the cycles of change within the world. (shrink)

The year 1905 has been called Einstein's annus mirabilis in virtue of three ground-breaking works completed over the span of a few months --- the light quantum paper (Einstein, 1905a), the Brownian motion paper (Einstein, 1905c), and the paper on the electrodynamics of moving bodies introducing the special theory of relativity (Einstein, 1905d). There are prima facie reasons for thinking that the origins of these papers cannot be understood in isolation from one another. Due to space limitations, we concentrate primarily (...) on the light quantum paper, since, in key respects, it marks the turning point for the annus mirabilis. The task is to probe, not just how the idea of the light quantum might have occurred to Einstein, but, more importantly, what convinced him that the idea was not just a quixotic hypothesis, but an unavoidable and demonstrable feature of radiation. The crucial development, we suggest, arose from comparing the energy fluctuations that following rigorously from the Stefan-Boltmann law, as well as from Wien's distribution formula for blackbody radiation, with what it is reasonable to expect from Maxwell's electromagnetic theory of light. A special case of this is addressed in (Einstein, 1904). The outcome for the general case leads naturally to the central theoretical argument of the light quantum paper, the expectation of Brownian-like motion, and several of the key results for the electrodynamics of moving bodies. (shrink)

The question whether distant simultaneity has a factual or a conventional status in special relativity has long been disputed and remains in contention even today. At one point it appeared that Malament had settled the issue by proving that the only non-trivial equivalence relation definable from causal connectability is the standard simultaneity relation. Recently, however, Sarkar and Stachel claim to have identified a suspect assumption in the proof by defining a non-standard simultaneity relation from causal connectability. I contend that their (...) critique is based on a misunderstanding of the criteria for the definability of a relation, a misunderstanding that Malement's original treatment helped to foster. There are in fact a variety of notions of definability that can be brought to bear. They all, however, require a condition that suffices to secure Malament's result. The non-standard relation Sarkar and Stachel claim to be definable is not so definable, and, I argue, their proposal to modify the notion of “causal definability” is misguided. Finally, I address the relevance of Malament's result to the thesis of conventionalism. (shrink)

In the Scholium to the Definitions at the beginning of the {\em Principia\/} Newton distinguishes absolute time, space, place and motion from their relative counterparts and attempts to justify they are indeed ontologically distinct in that the absolute quantity cannot be reduced to some particular category of the relative, as Descartes had attempted by defining absolute motion to be relative motion with respect to immediately ambient bodies. Newton's bucket experiment, rather than attempting to show that absolute motion exists, is one (...) of five arguments from the properties, causes and effects of motion that attempts to show that no such program can succeed, and thus that true motion can be adequately analyzed only by invoking immovable places, i.e., the parts of absolute space. (shrink)

I address a number of questions concerning the interpretation of local time and the corresponding states theorem (CST) of the Versuch, questions which have been addressed either incompletely or inadequately in the secondary literature. In particular: (1) What is the relation between local time and the behavior of moving clocks? (2) What is the relation between the primed field variables and the electric and magnetic fields in a moving system? (3) What is the relation of the CST to the principle (...) of relativity and requirements of covariance? (4) Does the introduction of local time and the primed field variables constitute a hypothesis, i.e., an addition to or a modification of the basic theory? (shrink)

In this paper, we introduce a suppositional view of linguistic practice that ranges over fiction, science, and mathematics. While having similar con- sequences to some other views, in particular Linsky and Zalta’s plenitudinous platonism, the view advocated here both differs fundamentally in approach and accounts for a wider range of phenomena and scientific discourse.

One finds, even in texts by distinguished physicists, diverse enunciations of the correspondence principle. Typical is that quantum mechanics should agree with classical mechanics in some appropriate limit. Most commonly, the limit specified is that of high quantum numbers, or of large masses and orbits of large dimensions. But sometimes it is specified as mean behavior when large numbers quanta are involved, or sometimes even as just the average of quantum mechanical variables. Sometimes, the principle is even taken as a (...) prescription for replacing the classical dynamical observables with an appropriate mathematical operator. In 1918, however, Bohr proposed what he would later call the correspondence principle as a way of deriving amplitudes and polarizations of emitted and absorbed spectral lines. I will begin with Bohr's principle and trace the evolution of correspondence considerations through the 1920's, with a view as to whether in each case it is supposed to play the role of a theorem, an adequacy constraint, an inductive hypothesis or a heuristic. (shrink)

A number of writers have suggested that laws of nature must be universal in space and time. Just what this claim amounts to is the focus of the present study. I consider and compare a number of interpretations of the requirement, with especial reference to an example by Tooley which seems paradigmatic of the antithesis of universality in space and time. I also sketch a number of other concepts of "local", "global", and "universal", each of which should be kept distinct (...) from "universality in space and time ". I leave open the issue whether or not laws must satisfy any of the requirements. (shrink)

Although Trautman (1966) appears to give a unified‐field treatment of electrodynamics in Newtonian spacetime, there are difficulties in cogently interpreting it as such in relation to the facts of electromagnetic and magneto‐electric induction. Presented here is a covariant, nonunified field treatment of the Maxwell‐Lorentz theory with absolute space. This dispels a worry in Earman (1989) as to whether there are any historically realistic examples in which absolute space plays an indispensable role. It also shows how Trautman's formulation can be rendered (...) coherent, albeit at the cost of deunification, by reinterpreting the Maxwell tensor as a composite object involving, in part, elements from Newtonian spacetime. (shrink)

Many take Malaments result that the standard Einstein simultaniety relation is uniquely definable from the causal structure of Minkowski space-time to be tantamount to a refutation of the claim that criterion for simultaneity in the special theory of relativity (STR) is a matter of convention. I call into question this inference by examining concrete alternatives and suggest that what has been overlooked is why it should be assumed that in STR simultaneity must be relative only to a frame of reference (...) (or an inertial observer) and not to other parameters as well. (shrink)

1.Here is a well known theorem. Consider the homogeneous Maxwell equations(where E and H are functions of x, y, z, and t, and ).Use the coordinate substitutionsand the following substitutions for the field variablesThen, if terms depending on second and higher powers of (v/c) are dropped, the resulting equations have the same form as the original homogeneous Maxwell equations, i.e.

It is customarily thought that in addition to the class of observed phenomena there is a larger class of observable phenomena. For a theory to be empirically adequate, it must be true on this larger class. It is denied that there is such a thing as the class observable over and above observed phenomena. This does not entail that empirical adequacy reduces to agreement with just the observed facts. Observability is a feature of abstract items in the models of theories, (...) and thus conditions their empirical import. This doctrine of observability yields a brand of empiricism that a realist might live with. (shrink)

I examine the development of Reichenbach's ideas concerning the conventionality of simultaneity in connection with his ``epsilon''-definition of simultaneity. It does not appear that he ever considered non-standard choices of ``epsilon'' that yield the same ``light-geometry'' as that of special relativity. Rather, it appears he believed that non-standard choices, though always epistemically justified, lead to different ``light-geometries'' (e.g., classical space-time) and thus would necessitate more complicated ``matter axioms'' than those postulated in his axiomatization of relativity.

I explain why the New Theory of Reference of Marcus, Kripke, Kaplan, Putnam and others does not entail absolute time and space, contrary to what Quentin Smith has recently claimed.

Nearly all accounts of the genesis of special relativity unhesitatingly assume that the theory was worked out in a roughly five week period following the discovery of the relativity of simultaneity. Not only is there no direct evidence for this common presupposition, there are numerous considerations which militate against it. The evidence suggests it is far more reasonable that Einstein was already in possession of the Lorentz and field transformations, that he had applied these to the dynamics of the electron, (...) and that portions of the 1905 paper had actually been drafted well before the epistemological analysis of time. (shrink)

For much of this century it was widely assumed in philosophical circles that the relational doctrine of space, time, and motion had finally been established beyond the point of reasonable controversy. In large part this was due to a widespread perception that the theory of relativity is itself a relational theory. Indeed, some of Einstein’s own pronouncements foster this impression. For example, in his definitive formulation of general relativity of 1916, he argued the need for a generalization of the principle (...) of special relativity in order to eliminate the “factitious” causal role he saw inertial frames playing in classical mechanics and special relativity. ‘The laws of physics must be of such a nature that they apply to systems of reference in any kind of motion’. Einstein claimed this requirement is fulfilled by satisfaction of the Principle of General Covariance—that the equations expressing the laws of nature remain valid under arbitrary coordinate substitutions. This, he says, ‘takes away from space and time the last remnant of physical objectivity.’. (shrink)

Two problems in the paper by EGR are considered. One is the lack of any direct confirmatory evidence for the elegant rational reconstruction. The second is a significant gap in the historical account, just at the critical point in Einstein's discovery process -- namely, the reanalysis of simultaneity. In addition, the EGR account appears in danger of being overly focused on the electrodynamical aspect of special relativity to the exclusion of optical null experiments, and in particular to the exclusion of (...) the role of the 1887 Michelson-Morely interferometer experiment. The author disagrees with Miller on the Kantian aspects of Poincare, and on the role of Anschauungen, preferring to sketch instead a more important role for a Mach-like analysis of fundamental scientific concepts. It is argued that Miller has misconstrued the difference between an axiomatic theory and a "theory of principle" in Einstein's approach. Finally, some suggestions are made as to how the gap in our analysis of Einstein's revolution in simultaneity might be reexamined. (shrink)

Theories of discourse bring to realism new ideas about how knowledge develops and how representations of reality are influenced. We gain an understanding of the conceptual aspect of social life and the processes by which meaning is produced. This collection reflects the growing interest realist critics have shown towards forms of discourse theory and deconstruction. The diverse range of contributions address such issues as the work of Derrida and deconstruction, discourse theory, Eurocentrism and poststructuralism. What unites all of the contributions (...) is a sense that it is essential to provide a realist alternative to the hitherto dominance of social constructionism, hermeneutics and postmodernism, over many of the issues discussed. By developing a realist perspective the different authors attempt to embed discourse within the structured nature of the reality of the world. Realism can situate language, discourse and ideology within context specific, or 'causally efficacious' circumstances. Realism can help to uncover issues of power, representation, and subjectivity and how discursive and other social practices produce real effects. This can help us understand the manner in which social structures are reproduced through various forms of ideology and discourse. And by knowing this, we can start to address questions concerning human emancipation and how the world is to be transformed. (shrink)

Winner of the 1975 National Book Award, this brilliant and widely acclaimed book is a powerful philosophical challenge to the most widely held political and social positions of our age--liberal, socialist, and conservative.

Robert Stern investigates how scepticism can be countered by using transcendental arguments concerning the necessary conditions for the possibility of experience, language, or thought. He shows that the most damaging sceptical questions concern neither the certainty of our beliefs nor the reliability of our belief-forming methods, but rather how we can justify our beliefs.

This is a paradigmatic work of contemporary philosophy.

Robert Hanna presents a fresh view of the Kantian and analytic traditions that have dominated continental European and Anglo-American philosophy over the last two centuries, and of the connections between them. But this is not just a study in the history of philosophy, for out of this emerges Hanna's original approach to two much-contested theories that remain at the heart of contemporary philosophy. Hanna puts forward a new 'cognitive-semantic' interpretation of transcendental idealism, and a vigorous defense of Kant's theory (...) of analytic and synthetic necessary truth, making this compelling reading for all who are interested in these fundamental philosophical issues. (shrink)

One of our great behavioral scientists, the bestselling author of Behave, plumbs the depths of the science and philosophy of decision-making to mount a devastating case against free will, an argument with profound consequences Robert Sapolsky's Behave, his now classic account of why humans do good and why they do bad, pointed toward an unsettling conclusion: We may not grasp the precise marriage of nature and nurture that creates the physics and chemistry at the base of human behavior, but (...) that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Now, in Determined, Sapolsky takes his argument all the way, mounting a brilliant (and in his inimitable way, delightful) full-frontal assault on the pleasant fantasy that there is some separate self telling our biology what to do. Determined offers a marvelous synthesis of what we know about how consciousness works-the tight weave between reason and emotion and between stimulus and response in the moment and over a life. One by one, Sapolsky tackles all the major arguments for free will and takes them out, cutting a path through the thickets of chaos and complexity science and quantum physics, as well as touching ground on some of the wilder shores of philosophy. He shows us that the history of medicine is in no small part the history of learning that fewer and fewer things are somebody's "fault"; for example, for centuries we thought seizures were a sign of demonic possession. Yet, as he acknowledges, it's very hard, and at times impossible, to uncouple from our zeal to judge others and to judge ourselves. Sapolsky applies the new understanding of life beyond free will to some of our most essential questions around punishment, morality, and living well together. By the end, Sapolsky argues that while living our daily lives recognizing that we have no free will is going to be monumentally difficult, doing so is not going to result in anarchy, pointlessness, and existential malaise. Instead, it will make for a much more humane world. (shrink)

Classical American pragmatism: the pragmatist -- Enlightenment-and its problematic semantics -- Analyzing pragmatism: pragmatics and pragmatisms -- A Kantian rationalist pragmatism: pragmatism -- Inferentialism, and modality in Sellars's arguments against -- Empiricism -- Linguistic pragmatism and pragmatism about norms: an arc of -- Thought from Rorty's eliminative materialism to his pragmatism -- Vocabularies of pragmatism: synthesizing naturalism and -- Historicism -- Towards an analytic pragmatism: meaning-use analysis -- Pragmatism, expressivism, and anti-representationalism: -- Local and global possibilities.

A sourcebook for developing and facilitating collaborative groups capable of continuously adapting to anticipate the evolving learning needs of students. Based on a theoretical foundation of schools as complex systems in which linear management models are no longer sufficient.