Dold, Dominic and Teh, Nicholas (2025) Deriving the Geodesic Principle. Philosophy of Physics, 3 (1). pp. 1-24. ISSN 2753-5908
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Abstract
In the recent philosophy literature, there have been several attempts to use the seminal result by Geroch and Jang (1975) to precisify Harvey Brown’s claim that the geodesic principle can be recovered as a theorem in General Relativity, and then to critique it. We contend that the philosophical debate has unfolded in a curious way: even though Geroch and Jang’s paper contains two distinct approaches to the problem of geodesic motion, the philosophical literature has focused on only one of them. We then argue that the neglected approach offers an alternative—and more physical—set of resources to explain geodesic motion. Motivated by this approach, we prove a new “physical Geroch-Jang theorem,” which provides a scale-relative interpretation of the geodesic principle in General Relativity. We, thereby, make new resources available to re-evaluate Brown’s arguments as well as those of his critics.
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| Item Type: | Published Article or Volume | |||||||||
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| Subjects: | Specific Sciences > Physics > Classical Physics Specific Sciences > Physics |
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| Depositing User: | Dominic Dold | |||||||||
| Date Deposited: | 22 Aug 2025 14:00 | |||||||||
| Last Modified: | 22 Aug 2025 14:00 | |||||||||
| Item ID: | 26327 | |||||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Philosophy of Physics | |||||||||
| Publisher: | LSE Press | |||||||||
| Official URL: | https://philosophyofphysics.lse.ac.uk/articles/10.... | |||||||||
| DOI or Unique Handle: | https://doi.org/10. 31389/pop.203 | |||||||||
| Subjects: | Specific Sciences > Physics > Classical Physics Specific Sciences > Physics |
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| Date: | 21 August 2025 | |||||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 1-24 | |||||||||
| Volume: | 3 | |||||||||
| Number: | 1 | |||||||||
| ISSN: | 2753-5908 | |||||||||
| URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/26327 |
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