Absolute vs. Relational Theories of Space and Time

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The time is ripe for significant progress to be made on a cluster of issues that goes under the label of absolute versus relational conceptions of space and time. We are now in a position to provide a separation and classification of the issues and to see where linkages do and do not exist. In some cases, we can settle an issue, and in other cases we can say with more precision what the issue is, what is at stake, and what it would take to bring a resolution. Professor Earman under this grant, will show that an empirically adequate theory of motion, whether classical or relativistic, must be based on a space-time structure that is incompatible with a relational conception of motion. He argues, however, that the absolutenes of motion does not entail absoluteness of space-time in the sense of substantivalism. He will show the issue of substantivalism, first raised in the Leibnitz-Clarke correspondence, to be crucial to an understanding both of the genesis of Einstein's general theory of relativity and of the foundations of the completed theory. Further, he will show that the demand for the possibility of determinism in a theory like general relativity to force the abandonment of substantivalism with respect to the space-time manifold. In turn, the abandonment of a manifold of space-time points as a substratum to support fields leads to a conception of space-time that lies outside of the ambit of the traditional absolute versus relational debate.