Re: Is spacetime curvature the source of inertia?
- From: "Sue..." <suzysewnshow@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 31 May 2007 00:39:19 -0700
On May 30, 8:55 pm, bz <bz+...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Sue..." <suzysewns...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in news:1180560907.524487.211310
@h2g2000hsg.googlegroups.com:
Both the Levi-Civita connection and Mach's priniciple are discussed
without conflict in the ~1923 lecture. I would want to see some
later references where he abandons Mach's principle because
his argument favoring it is quite persuasive.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/einstein-philscience/
[quote]
That Einstein later repudiated positivism is beyond doubt. Many remarks
from at least the early 1920s through the end of his life make this clear.
In 1946 he explained what he took to be Mach's basic error:
He did not place in the correct light the essentially constructive and
speculative nature of all thinking and more especially of scientific
thinking; in consequence, he condemned theory precisely at those points
where its constructive-speculative character comes to light unmistakably,
such as in the kinetic theory of atoms. (Einstein 1946, 21)
Is Einstein here also criticizing his own youthful philosophical
indiscretions? The very example that Einstein gives here makes any such
interpretation highly implausible, because one of Einstein's main goals in
his early work on Brownian motion (Einstein 1905b) was precisely to prove
the reality of atoms, this in the face of the then famous skepticism of
thinkers like Mach and Wilhelm Ostwald:
My principal aim in this was to find facts that would guarantee as much as
possible the existence of atoms of definite size. . . . The agreement of
these considerations with experience together with Planck's determination
of the true molecular size from the law of radiation (for high
temperatures) convinced the skeptics, who were quite numerous at that time
(Ostwald, Mach), of the reality of atoms. (Einstein 1946, 45, 47)
[unquote]
Though I am not sure, from my quick skim, exactly which thoughts of Mach
are being reputiated.
Good point. Mach probably wouldn't have recognised it anyway.
<< In theoretical physics, particularly in discussions of gravitation
theories, Mach's principle is the name given by Einstein to a vague
hypothesis first supported by the physicist and philosopher Ernst
Mach. The broad notion is that "mass there influences inertia here".
This concept was a guiding factor in Einstein's development of the
general theory of relativity. In many respects, this is a true
statement in the general theory. However, because this principle
is so vague, many distinct statements can be (and have been)
made which would qualify as a Mach principle. >>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach%27s_principle
The writer you quoted isn't much more specific than Mach
himself. The criticism seems more broadly targeted to
Mach's approach to problems, in general. A link to cosmology
wasn't dashed. Newton's third law wasn't refuted.
Einstein may have abandoned unweildly force-terms in
unifying gravity and inertia but I wouldn't take that to
be abandon of the broad notion is that "mass there
influences inertia here". Someone that has studied
the field equations carefully can likely direct us
to connections that implement the principle. If they
exist to this day, then the "Mach-Einstein" principle
was retained.
Sue...
--
bz
please pardon my infinite ignorance, the set-of-things-I-do-not-know is an
infinite set.
bz+...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx remove ch100-5 to avoid spam trap
.
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