Brown, Harvey R. and Pooley, Oliver (1999) The origin of the spacetime metric: Bell's `Lorentzian pedagogy' and its significance in general relativity. [Preprint]
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the `Lorentzian Pedagogy' defended by J.S. Bell in his essay ``How to teach special relativity'', and to explore its consistency with Einstein's thinking from 1905 to 1952. Some remarks are also made in this context on Weyl's philosophy of relativity and his 1918 gauge theory. Finally, it is argued that the Lorentzian pedagogy---which stresses the important connection between kinematics and dynamics---clarifies the role of rods and clocks in general relativity.
| Item Type: | Preprint |
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| Additional Information: | This is a preprint of a contribution to C. Callender and N. Huggett (eds) ``Physics Meets Philosophy at the Planck Scale'', (Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 256--72. |
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| Keywords: | special relativity, general relativity, space-time metric, gauge theory, length contraction, time dilation, principle theories, constructive theories, Einstein, Lorentz, FitzGerald, Bell, Weyl, Torretti |
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| Subjects: | General Issues > Explanation
Specific Sciences > Physics > Relativity Theory
Specific Sciences > Physics |
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| Depositing User: | Oliver Pooley |
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| Date Deposited: | 12 Sep 2003 |
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| Last Modified: | 07 Oct 2010 11:12 |
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| Item ID: | 1385 |
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| URI: | http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/1385 |
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