Related papers: Space-time Constructivism vs. Modal Provincialism:…
Different aspects of relativity, mainly in a canonical formulation, relevant for the question "Is spacetime nothing more than a mathematical space (which describes the evolution in time of the ordinary three-dimensional world) or is it a…
Klein-Gordon gravity, 1920s-30s particle physics, and 1890s Neumann-Seeliger modified gravity suggest a "graviton mass term" *algebraic* in the potential. Unlike Nordstr\"om's "massless" theory, massive scalar gravity is invariant under the…
Prominently, Norton (2008) argues against constructivism about spacetime theories, the doctrine that spatiotemporal structure in the dynamics only has derivative status. Among other things, he accuses Brown and Pooley's dynamical approach…
Einstein distinguished between ``principle'' and ``constructive'' theories in physics, and although he thought the latter were more explanatory than the former, he regarded his 1905 formulation of special relativity theory as a principle…
Minkowski space serves as a framework for the theoretical constructions that deal with manifestations of relativistic effects in physical phenomena. But neither Minkowski himself nor the subsequent developers of the relativity theory have…
Classical mechanics, relativity, electrodynamics and quantum mechanics are often depicted as separate realms of physics, each with its own formalism and notion. This remains unsatisfactory with respect to the unity of nature and to the…
In this article, I argue that modern spacetime physics causes problems for a number of traditional accounts of modality, but also offers important new ideas about the connection between modal and non-modal features of reality. I suggest…
We argue that the conventional construction for quantum fields in curved spacetime has a grave drawback: It involves an uncountable set of physical field systems which are nonequivalent with respect to the Bogolubov transformations, and…
We clarify the relation between noncommutative spacetimes and multifractional geometries, two quantum-gravity-related approaches where the fundamental description of spacetime is not given by a classical smooth geometry. Despite their…
We present a deductive theory of space-time which is realistic, objective, and relational. It is realistic because it assumes the existence of physical things endowed with concrete properties. It is objective because it can be formulated…
A modern re-visitation of the consequences of the lack of an intrinsic notion of instantaneous 3-space in relativistic theories leads to a reformulation of their kinematical basis emphasizing the role of non-inertial frames centered on an…
One of the most distinguished features of our algebraic geometrical, pencil concept of space-time is the fact that spatial dimensions and time stand, as far as their intrinsic structure is concerned, on completely different footings: the…
The relativistic conception of space and time is challenged by the quantum nature of physical observables. It has been known for a long time that Poincar\'e symmetry of field theory can be extended to the larger conformal symmetry. We use…
Some authors in the quantum gravity community endorse, explicitly or implicitly, a radical relationalist view of time which states that the ordinal structure of time is not needed even in our classical theories, especially in general…
I examine the debate between substantivalists and relationalists about the ontological character of spacetime and conclude it is not well posed. I argue that the so-called Hole Argument does not bear on the debate, because it provides no…
Space-Time in general relativity is a dynamical entity because it is subject to the Einstein field equations. The space-time metric provides different geometrical structures: conformal, volume, projective and linear connection. A deep…
We establish the correspondence between two apparently unrelated but in fact complementary approaches of a relativistic deformed kinematics: the geometric properties of momentum space and the loss of absolute locality in canonical…
The nature of the change in perspective that accompanies the proposal of a unified physical theory deriving from the single dimension of time is elaborated. On expressing a temporal interval in a multi-dimensional form, via a direct…
Finite projective (lattice) geometries defined over rings instead of fields have recently been recognized to be of great importance for quantum information theory. We believe that there is much more potential hidden in these geometries to…
It is rarely emphasized in modern physics textbooks that our definitions of space and time have to reflect their complete interdependence. Our intuitive methods of always picturing one-dimensional space as a sum of unit-length rods and of…