How Weyl stumbled across electricity while pursuing mathematical justice
History and Philosophy of Physics
2008-04-22 v1 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Abstract
It is argued that Weyl's theory of gravitation and electricity came out of `mathematical justice': out of the equal rights direction and length. Such mathematical justice was manifestly at work in the context of discovery, and is enough (together with a couple of simple and natural operations) to derive all of source-free electromagnetism. Weyl's repeated references to coordinates and gauge are taken to express equal treatment of direction and length.
Cite
@article{arxiv.0804.2947,
title = {How Weyl stumbled across electricity while pursuing mathematical justice},
author = {Alexander Afriat},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0804.2947},
year = {2008}
}