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AGPhil: Arbeitsgruppe Philosophie der Physik

AGPhil 7: The role of geometry in gravitational theories

AGPhil 7.1: Invited Talk

Thursday, March 19, 2015, 10:45–11:30, A 060

A Defence of the Geometrical Interpretation of General Relativity — •Oliver Pooley — Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford, UK

According to a popular view, general relativity, in its standard formulation, is fundamentally a theory of spacetime structure; one that explains gravitational phenomena through spacetime curvature. In my talk I will critically review several challenges to this view, from Einstein’s rejection of the geometric interpretation of the theory to recent uses of the notorious Hole Argument. Particular attention will be paid to the questions of whether and why the metric field, g_ab, is naturally interpreted as representing spacetime geometry (rather than, say, a “gravitational field”). I also hope to clarify the extent to which various principles supposedly satisfied by general relativity (primarily, general covariance and the equivalence principle) bear on this family of interpretative questions.