Leibnizian relationalism for general relativistic physics
History and Philosophy of Physics
2016-08-26 v1
Abstract
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 ontology fares when it comes to general relativistic physics. Using a Humean strategy, we regard the gravitational field as a means to represent the overall change in the distance relations among point particles in a way that achieves the best combination of being simple and being informative.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1608.07257,
title = {Leibnizian relationalism for general relativistic physics},
author = {Antonio Vassallo and Michael Esfeld},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1608.07257},
year = {2016}
}
Comments
19 pages, accepted for publication in Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics