▽Structuralism in Physics ●10/05 08:33 First published Sun Nov 24, 2002; substantive revision Fri Oct 4, 2019 Under the heading of “structuralism in physics” there are three different but closely related research programs in philosophy of science and, in particular, in philosophy of physics. These programs were initiated by the work of Joseph Sneed, Günther Ludwig, and Erhard Scheibe, respectively, since the begin of t
▽Einstein’s Philosophy of Science ●09/14 12:08 First published Wed Feb 11, 2004; substantive revision Fri Sep 13, 2019 Albert Einstein (1879–1955) is well known as the most prominent physicist of the twentieth century. His contributions to twentieth-century philosophy of science, though of comparable importance, are less well known. Einstein’s own philosophy of science is an original synthesis of elements drawn from sources as dive
▽The Equivalence of Mass and Energy ●08/16 11:55 First published Wed Sep 12, 2001; substantive revision Thu Aug 15, 2019 Einstein correctly described the equivalence of mass and energy as “the most important upshot of the special theory of relativity” (Einstein 1919), for this result lies at the core of modern physics. Many commentators have observed that in Einstein’s first derivation of this famous result, he did not express
▽Hilbert’s Program ●07/23 04:13 The question of how exactly Hilbert understood the numerals is difficult to answer. They are not physical objects (actual strokes on paper, for instance), since it must always be possible to extend a numeral by adding another stroke (and, as Hilbert also argues in “On the infinite” (1926), it is doubtful that the physical universe is infinite). According to Hilbert (1922b, 202), their
▽The Hole Argument ●05/18 11:47 First published Mon Feb 1, 1999; substantive revision Fri May 17, 2019 1. Modern Spacetime Theories: A Beginner’s Guide 1. Modern Spacetime Theories: A Beginner’s Guide Virtually all modern spacetime theories are now built in the same way. The theory posits a manifold of events and then assigns further structures to those events to represent the content of spacetime. A standard example
