Advanced Philosophy of Physics

One of the central metaphysical questions from antiquity concerns the nature of space and time. Newton and Leibniz, for example, argued about whether space and time can exist independently of matter or are only relations among material things. But the classical account of the structure of space and time was rejected first by the Special Theory of Relativity and then even more radically by the General Theory of Relativity. In the latter theory, Newton’s postulate of a force of gravity is completely rejected, and gravitational effects are instead attributed to the curvature of space-time itself. We will study enough of these theories to understand what the various proposals are and perhaps even consider some novel ideas that go beyond General Relativity.

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In presence

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