Einstein's Genie: Spacetime out of the Bottle, by Graham Nerlich

Title
Einstein's Genie: Spacetime out of the Bottle, by Graham Nerlich
Publication Date
2016
Author(s)
Forrest, Peter
Type of document
Review
Language
en
Entity Type
Publication
Publisher
Routledge
Place of publication
United Kingdom
DOI
10.1080/00048402.2016.1186703
UNE publication id
une:1959.11/53236
Abstract

This is a book that everyone interested in understanding Relativity should read. In it, Graham Nerlich argues, lucidly and with minimum technicality, that Special and General Relativity are best understood as theories about spacetime, which is a concrete entity but not a substance. (Here he is taking our concept of a substance to require a substance to be a cause.) He argues that gravity is not a field but, instead, the geometry of spacetime explains how things behave in the absence of fields, neither causing, nor, more controversially, being caused by anything.

Link
Citation
Australasian Journal of Philosophy, v.94 (4)
ISSN
1471-6828
0004-8402

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