Related papers: A partial defense of algebraic relationalism
A gravitational field can be defined in terms of a moving frame, which when made noncommutative yields a preferred basis for a differential calculus. It is conjectured that to a linear perturbation of the commutation relations which define…
This paper forms part of a wider campaign: to deny pointillisme. That is the doctrine that a physical theory's fundamental quantities are defined at points of space or of spacetime, and represent intrinsic properties of such points or…
Two questions are investigated by looking successively at classical mechanics, special relativity, and relativistic gravity: first, how is space related with spacetime? The proposed answer is that each given reference fluid, that is a…
Although in general there is no meaningful concept of factorization in fields, that in free associative algebras (over a commutative field) can be extended to their respective free field (universal field of fractions) on the level of…
The new approach to quantize the gravity based on the notion of differential algebra is suggested. It is shown that the differential geometry of this object can not be described in terms of points. The spatialization procedure giving rise…
We present an innovative approach to dimensional analysis, based on a general representation theorem for complete quantity functions admitting a covariant scalar representation; this theorem is in turn grounded in a purely algebraic theory…
This is the first of four papers prompted by a recent literature about a doctrine dubbed spacetime functionalism. This paper gives our general framework for discussing functionalism. Following Lewis, we take it as a species of reduction. We…
We introduce and investigate the concept of Stratified Algebra, a new algebraic framework equipped with a layer-based structure on a vector space. We formalize a set of axioms governing intra-layer and inter-layer interactions, study their…
An ontology of Leibnizian relationalism, consisting in distance relations among sparse matter points and their change only, is well recognized as a serious option in the context of classical mechanics. In this paper, we investigate how this…
The aim of the paper is to discuss the relations between the three kinds of objects named in the title. In a sense, this is a survey of such relations; however, some new directions are also considered. This relates, especially, to sections…
Quantum theory can be understood as pointing to an ontology of relations. I observe that this reading of quantum mechanics is supported by the ubiquity of relationality in contemporary fundamental physics, including in classical mechanics,…
The causal structure of space-time offers a natural notion of an opposite or orthogonal in the logical sense, where the opposite of a set is formed by all points non time-like related with it. We show that for a general space-time the…
The questions of what represents space-time in GR, the status of gravitational energy, the substantivalist-relationalist issue, and the (non)exceptional status of gravity are interrelated. If space-time has energy-momentum, then space-time…
In this paper we introduce a new kind of topological space, called 'structured space', which locally resembles various kinds of algebraic structures. This can be useful, for instance, to locally study a space that cannot be globally endowed…
Algebraic hyperstructures represent a natural extension of classical algebraic structures. In a classical algebraic structure, the composition of two elements is an element, while in an algebraic hyperstructure, the composition of two…
The purpose of this contribution is to give a coherent account of a particular narrative which links locales, geometric theories, sheaf semantics and constructive commutative algebra. We are hoping to convey a firm grasp of three ideas: (1)…
This paper puts forth a class of algebraic structures, relativized Boolean algebras (RBAs), that provide semantics for propositional logic in which truth/validity is only defined relative to a local domain. In particular, the join of an…
An algebraic theory, sometimes called an equational theory, is a theory defined by finitary operations and equations, such as the theories of groups and of rings. It is well known that algebraic theories are equivalent to finitary monads on…
Preliminary results on a canonical formulation of general relativity based on an analogy with the string model of elementary particles are presented. Rather than the metric components, the basic fields of the formalism are taken to be the…
We present herewith certain thoughts on the important subject of nowadays physics, pertaining to the so-called ``singularities'', that emanated from looking at the theme in terms of ADG (: abstract differential geometry). Thus, according to…