Related papers: Spacetime Conventionalism Revisited
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…
Popular wisdom amongst theoretical physicists says that the continuum structure of spacetime is probably not elementary, but rather emergent. While many arguments to support that view arise from speculative ideas, the argument can also be…
I explain in what sense the structure of space and time is probably vague or indefinite, a notion I define. This leads to the mathematical representation of location in space and time by a vague interval. From this, a principle of…
Spacetime singularities in general relativity are commonly thought to be problematic, in that they signal a breakdown in the theory. We address the question of how to interpret this breakdown, restricting our attention to classical…
We investigate structure that describes physical data in gravitational systems that is, to one degree or another, independent of the metric and affine structure. We dub such structure surplus structure and seek to incorporate it into our…
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…
As repeatedly emphasized by Einstein our knowledge of the structure of space and time is based entirely on inferences from observations of physical objects and processes. At the most fundamental level these objects and processes are…
Space and time are central concepts for understanding our World. They are important ingredients at the core of every scientific theory and subject of intense debate in philosophy. Albert Einstein's Special and General theories of Relativity…
The idea that possible configurations of a physical system can be represented as points in a multidimensional configuration space ${\cal C}$ is explored. The notion of spacetime, without ${\cal C}$, does not exist in this theory. Spacetime…
There is a venerable position in the philosophy of space and time that holds that the geometry of spacetime is conventional, provided one is willing to postulate a "universal force field". Here we ask a more focused question, inspired by…
A reflexive relation on a set can be a starting point in defining the causal structure of a spacetime in General Relativity and other relativistic theories of gravity. If we identify this relation as the relation between lightlike separated…
We discuss the problem of determining the spacetime structure. We show that when we are using only topological methods the spacetime can be modelled as an R- or Q-compact space although the R-compact spaces seem to be more appropriate.…
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 consider the possibility that the basic space of physics is not spacetime, but configuration space. We illustrate this on the example with a system of gravitationally interacting point particles. It turns out that such system can be…
This article presents a comprehensive and rigorous overview of spacetime singularities within the framework of classical General Relativity. Singularities are defined through the failure of geodesic completeness, reflecting the limits of…
A deformation of special relativistic kinematics (possible signal of a theory of quantum gravity at low energies) leads to a modification of the notion of spacetime. At the classical level, this modification is required when one considers a…
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…
The dimensional structure of space-time is investigated according to physical and mathematical methods. We show that ther are various empirical and theoretical restrictions on the number of independent dimensions of space-time, consequently…
Linear topological spaces with partial ordering (linear kinematics) are studied. They are defined by a set of 8 axioms implying that topology, linear structure and ordering are compatible with each other. Most of the results are valid for…
The advantages to consider the ordinary space-time as the symplectic rather than pseudo-orthogonal one are indicated, and the consequences of extending this view to extra space/time dimensions are discussed.