On the history of Levi-Civita's parallel transport
History and Philosophy of Physics
2016-08-18 v1
Abstract
In this historical note, we wish to highlight the crucial conceptual role played by the principle of virtual work of analytical mechanics, in working out the fundamental notion of parallel transport on a Riemannian manifold, which opened the way to the theory of connections and gauge theories. Moreover, after a detailed historical-technical reconstruction of the original Levi-Civita's argument, a further historiographical deepening and a related critical discussion of the question, are pursued.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1608.04986,
title = {On the history of Levi-Civita's parallel transport},
author = {Giuseppe Iurato},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1608.04986},
year = {2016}
}
Comments
A case-study in history of mathematical physics and theoretical physics