Absolute vs. Relational Theories of Space and Time

在一系列问题上取得重大进展的时机已经成熟，这些问题被贴上了空间和时间的绝对概念与关系概念的标签。我们现在能够对这些问题进行分类和分类，并看到哪里有联系，哪里没有联系。在某些情况下，我们可以解决一个问题，在另一些情况下，我们可以更准确地说出问题是什么，有什么利害关系，以及需要采取什么措施才能达成解决方案。厄曼教授在这笔赠款下将证明，经验上充分的运动理论，无论是经典的还是相对论的，都必须基于与运动的关系概念不相容的时空结构。然而，他认为运动的绝对性并不意味着实体主义意义上的时空绝对性。他将展示在莱布尼茨-克拉克通信中首次提出的实体主义问题，对于理解爱因斯坦广义相对论的起源和完整理论的基础都是至关重要的。此外，他将证明，在像广义相对论这样的理论中要求决定论的可能性，以迫使放弃关于时空流形的实体主义。反过来，放弃大量的时空点作为支持领域的底层，导致了一种时空概念，它超出了传统的绝对与关系辩论的范围。

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.