Jena 2013 – scientific programme

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AGPhil: Arbeitsgruppe Philosophie der Physik

AGPhil 2: Space, Time and Spacetime

AGPhil 2.1: Invited Talk

Monday, February 25, 2013, 16:30–17:15, SR 113

Why Einstein Never Really Cared for Geometrization — •Dennis Lehmkuhl — University of Pittsburgh, Center for Philosophy of Science, USA

I argue that, contrary to folklore, Einstein never really cared for geometrizing the gravitational or (subsequently) the electromagnetic field. Indeed, he thought that the very idea of geometrization was "meaningless". I will show that instead, Einstein saw the unification of inertia and gravity as one of the major achievements of GR. Interestingly, he did not locate this unification primarily in the field equations but in the geodesic equation, the law of motion of test particles. I will investigate in what sense Einstein thought a "geometrization of gravity" to be meaningless, and how exactly he distinguished it from a "physicalization of geometry" on the one hand, and a "unification of inertia and gravity" on the other.