Pentcho Valev wrote:
>
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026831.500-what-makes-the-universe-tick.html
> "General relativity knits together space, time and gravity.
> Confounding all common sense, how time passes in Einstein's universe
> depends on what you are doing and where you are. Clocks run faster
> when the pull of gravity is weaker, so if you live up a skyscraper you
> age ever so slightly faster than you would if you lived on the ground
> floor, where Earth's gravitational tug is stronger. "General
> relativity completely changed our understanding of time," says Carlo
> Rovelli, a theoretical physicist at the University of the
> Mediterranean in Marseille, France.....It is still not clear who is
> right, says John Norton, a philosopher based at the University of
> Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Norton is hesitant to express it, but his
> instinct - and the consensus in physics - seems to be that space and
> time exist on their own. The trouble with this idea, though, is that
> it doesn't sit well with relativity, which describes space-time as a
> malleable fabric whose geometry can be changed by the gravity of
> stars, planets and matter."
>
>
http://philosophy.ucsd.edu/faculty/ccallender/index_files/physics%20against%20tense.doc
> Craig Callender: "In my opinion, by far the best way for the tenser to
> respond to Putnam et al is to adopt the Lorentz 1915 interpretation of
> time dilation and Fitzgerald contraction. Lorentz attributed these
> effects (and hence the famous null results regarding an aether) to the
> Lorentz invariance of the dynamical laws governing matter and
> radiation, not to spacetime structure. On this view, Lorentz
> invariance is not a spacetime symmetry but a dynamical symmetry, and
> the special relativistic effects of dilation and contraction are not
> purely kinematical. The background spacetime is Newtonian or neo-
> Newtonian, not Minkowskian. Both Newtonian and neo-Newtonian spacetime
> include a global absolute simultaneity among their invariant
> structures (with Newtonian spacetime singling out one of neo-Newtonian
> spacetimes many preferred inertial frames as the rest frame). On this
> picture, there is no relativity of simultaneity and spacetime is
> uniquely decomposable into space and time."
>
>
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/35992/title/It%E2%80%99s_Likely_That_Times_Are_Changing
> "A century ago, mathematician Hermann Minkowski famously merged space
> with time, establishing a new foundation for physics; today physicists
> are rethinking how the two should fit together....Einsteins belief
> that time is illusory did not stem from a mere devotion to Newtonian
> determinism. After all, he had disregarded Newton before, rewriting
> the laws of motion that underpinned deterministic philosophy in the
> first place. In so doing, Einstein introduced a new notion of time,
> more radical than even he at first realized. In fact, the view of time
> that Einstein adopted was first articulated by his onetime math
> teacher in a famous lecture delivered one century ago. That lecture,
> by the German mathematician Hermann Minkowski, established a new arena
> for the presentation of physics, a new vision of the nature of reality
> redefining the mathematics of existence. The lecture was titled Space
> and Time, and it introduced to the world the marriage of the two, now
> known as spacetime. It was a good marriage, but lately physicists
> passion for spacetime has begun to diminish. And some are starting to
> whisper about possible grounds for divorce."
>
> Clearly Einsteinians are ready for divorce but salaries should remain
> unchanged. That is the only problem.
The divorce did not take place here:
http://www.philosophie.ch/eidos/events2008/summerschool.shtml
GSSPP08 - Geneva Summer School in the Philosophy of Physics 2008, July 28 - August 2
Topic: What is the Nature of Space and Time?
John Norton, the cleverest Einsteinian, did not know how to get rid of Einstein's space-time concoction without threatening the salaries of Einsteinians. Craig Callender was not invited at all - judging from what he writes above, he does not see the danger and should not be allowed to talk in public.
Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com
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