Linnemann, Niels and Read, James
(2026)
Prising apart the Great "Puzzle" Ball of Thread: another look at the local validity of special relativity.
[Preprint]
Abstract
A knotty issue in the philosophy of spacetime regards the relationship between the special and general theories of relativity. Is special relativity anything more than the theory of Minkowski spacetime (and material fields set thereon), and as such anything more than but one amongst many in the panoply of solutions of the general theory? Or is special relativity, rather, a theory which holds locally in the models of general relativity? In response to the latter of these questions, Fletcher and Weatherall (2023a,b) have raised pressing challenges to the claim that there is some readily identifiable special sense in which special relativity is locally valid in general relativity. In this article, we take a step back, highlighting a number of senses in which one might in fact be able to hold onto claims that special relativity is locally valid in general relativity (and is distinguished from other spacetimes in this respect), the results of Fletcher and Weatherall (2023a,b) notwithstanding. In addition, we point to a number of positions in the philosophy of science according to which claims regarding the local validity of special relativity in general relativity would seem to stand up to scrutiny. Our goal in this work is to be both irenic and synoptic; to isolate and tease apart the multifarious threads wrapped up in this issue in a way which (with any luck) will be useful to those philosophers of physics who choose to work on the topic going forward.
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