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基本説明
This book combines physics, history, and philosophy in a radical new approach to introducing the philosophy of physics.
Full Description
This book combines physics, philosophy, and history in a radical new approach to introducing the philosophy of physics. It leads the reader through several central problems in the philosophy of physics by tracing their connections to a single issue: whether a cause must be spatiotemporally local to its effect, or whether action at a distance can occur
Contents
Preface vi
1 What is Spatiotemporal Locality? 1
1 The Big Picture 1
2 Causal Relations between Events 3
3 Action by Contact 7
4 Spatial, Temporal, and Spatiotemporal Locality Defined 13
5 Intrinsic Properties and Noncausal Connections 17
Discussion Questions 23
Notes 24
2 Fields to the Rescue? 26
1 The Electric Force 26
2 The Electric Field and its Possible Interpretations 32
3 Potentials 42
4 Lines of Force 47
Discussion Questions 61
Notes 65
3 Dispositions and Causes 67
1 Introduction 67
2 Dispositions, Categorical Bases, and Subjunctive Conditionals 71
3 Are the Categorical Bases in Themselves Unknowable? 79
Discussion Questions 90
Notes 92
4 Locality and Scientific Explanation 94
1 Is Action at a Distance Impossible? 94
2 Brute Facts and Ultimate Explanations 95
3 Which Facts are Brute? 100
Discussion Questions 107
Notes 110
5 Fields, Energy, and Momentum 111
1 Introduction 111
2 The Argument from Conserved Quantities 112
3 Why Energy's Ontological Status Matters 120
4 Energy in Classical Physics 125
5 Energy in the Fields 131
6 Energy Flow and the Poynting Vector 136
7 A Moral Regarding the Testability of Theories 153
Discussion Questions 157
Notes 162
6 Is there Nothing but Fields? 165
1 Is Electric Charge Real? 165
2 Faraday's Picture 167
Discussion Questions 171
Notes 173
7 Relativity and the Unification of Electricity and Magnetism 175
1 Unification in Physics 175
2 How Relativity Unifies Electricity and Magnetism 180
3 Einstein's Argument from Asymmetry 186
4 The Interdependence of Philosophy and Physics 199
Discussion Questions 201
Notes 203
8 Relativity, Energy, Mass, and the Reality of Fields 205
1 Classical Physics and the "Relativity of Motion" 206
2 Relativistic Invariants and the Unification that Relativity Achieves: Space and Time 210
3 Relativistic Invariants and the Unification that Relativity Achieves: Energy and Momentum 221
4 Mass and the Meaning of "e = mc2 " 224
5 Fields - At Last! 240
6 Erasing the Line between Scientific Theory and its Philosophical Interpretation 249
Discussion Questions 250
Notes 252
9 Quantum Metaphysics 255
1 Is Quantum Mechanics Complete? 255
2 The Bell Inequalities 263
3 For Whom the Bell Tolls 271
4 Wrestling with Nonlocality 280
Discussion Questions 298
Notes 300
Final Exam 302
References 305
Index 316