Weatherall, James Owen (2018) Some Philosophical Prehistory of the (Earman-Norton) Hole Argument. [Preprint]

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Abstract

The celu of the philosophical literature on the hole argument is the 1987 paper by Earman \& Norton ["What Price Space-time Substantivalism? The Hole Story" Br. J. Phil. Sci.]. This paper has a well-known back-story, concerning work by Stachel and Norton on Einstein's thinking in the years 1913-15. Less well-known is a connection between the hole argument and Earman's work on Leibniz in the 1970s and 1980s, which in turn can be traced to an argument first presented in 1975 by Howard Stein. Remarkably, this thread originates with a misattribution: the argument Earman attributes to Stein, which ultimately morphs into the hole argument, was not the argument Stein gave. The present paper explores this episode and presents some reflections on how it bears on the subsequent literature.

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Item Type:	Preprint
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID Weatherall, James Owen weatherj@uci.edu
Keywords:	Stein, Earman, hole argument, space-time, determinism, Leibniz
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Physics > Classical Physics General Issues > History of Philosophy of Science Specific Sciences > Physics Specific Sciences > Physics > Relativity Theory
Depositing User:	James Owen Weatherall
Date Deposited:	11 Dec 2018 20:00
Last Modified:	11 Dec 2018 20:00
Item ID:	15435
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Physics > Classical Physics General Issues > History of Philosophy of Science Specific Sciences > Physics Specific Sciences > Physics > Relativity Theory
Date:	2018
URI:	https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/15435

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• Some Philosophical Prehistory of the (Earman-Norton) Hole Argument. (deposited 11 Dec 2018 20:00) [Currently Displayed]
  • Some Philosophical Prehistory of the (Earman-Norton) Hole Argument. (deposited 14 Feb 2020 01:29)

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