Physical Relativity: Space-time Structure from a Dynamical Perspective |  | Author: Harvey R. Brown
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
List Price: $75.00
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Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 1746617
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 240
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.5 x 6.2 x 0.6
ISBN: 0199275831
Dewey Decimal Number: 530.11
EAN: 9780199275830
ASIN: 0199275831
Publication Date: February 2, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
It is not widely known that Einstein had doubts, increasing with time, about the way he formulated his special theory of relativity in 1905. Physical Relativity examines the grounds of these doubts and related misgivings on the part of a handful of physicists and philosophers in the course of the twentieth century. Harvey Brown defends an interpretation of relativity theory, and hence of the nature of space and time, that combines Einstein's insights with those of his immediate precursors, who today are widely regarded as having had the right ideas for the wrong reasons. Appearing in the centennial year of Einstein's celebrated paper on special relativity, Physical Relativity is an unusual, critical examination of Einstein's thinking that will be of great interest to philosophers of physics, physicists, and historians of science.
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| Customer Reviews:
mediocre February 4, 2008
parmenides
5 out of 7 found this review helpful
The author of Physical Relativity offers a historical and critical discussion of the special and general relativity ideas. Although one
appreciates his insight, the book in the end fails to impress.
In particular, the book is useless to those who do not know relativity theory since a clear and direct discussion of relativity is nowhere to be found.
The book disappoints even experts in Relativity since one has to read in between the lines in order to understand what is the author's point of view throughout his essay. A point of view very rarely expressed in a concise and direct manner.
In the end it appears that
the author does not consider that Relativity theories refer to an ontologically independent physical agent of spacetime geometry.
Instead, he thinks that spacetime geometry is an artifact of
macroscopic dynamical effects of more fundamental quantum theories of
basic interactions in physics like quantum gravity and quantum electrodynamics.
Although an expert in relativity could find such a point of view worth thinking about for the majority of readers the book would look too cryptic to be enjoyable.
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