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2017:conf_talk4 [2017/05/18 12:22] sokolic |
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| - | In a famous and partly heated debate between Newton (actually Clarke) and Leibniz about Newton's law of motion, which according to Newton needed as background absolute space and time, Leibniz found the notion of absolute space and time unwarranted and set the quest for a purely relational law of physics, relational meaning for example that only the relative distances of matter points figure in the physical law. But Leibniz went even further in that the notion of distance should be dispensed of: size doesn't matter. Ernst Mach, in his critics of mechanics, had similar complaints about Newton's mechanics. Barbour and Bertotti developed a serious program to accommodate Leibniz's ideas called shape space dynamics. I shall introduce the ideas of that program for replacement of Newtonian mechanics. The lecture will be understandable to students. | + | In a famous and partly heated debate between Newton (actually Clarke) and Leibniz about Newton's law of motion, which according to Newton needed as background absolute space and time, Leibniz found the notion of absolute space and time unwarranted and set the quest for a purely relational law of physics, relational meaning for example that only the relative distances of matter points figure in the physical law. But Leibniz went even further in that the notion of distance should be dispensed of: size doesn't matter. Ernst Mach, in his critics of mechanics, had similar complaints about Newton's mechanics. Barbour and Bertotti developed a serious program to accommodate Leibniz's ideas called shape space dynamics. I shall introduce the ideas of that program for replacement of Newtonian mechanics. |
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