: Peter Forrest
: The Necessary Structure of the All-pervading Aether Necessary Structure of the All-pervading Aether
: Walter de Gruyter GmbH& Co.KG
: 9783110325928
: Philosophische Analyse / Philosophical AnalysisISSN
: 1
: CHF 0.50
:
: 20. und 21. Jahrhundert
: English
: 226
: Wasserzeichen
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: PDF
In this book I investigate the necessary structure of the aether - the stuff that fills the whole universe. Some of my conclusions are. 1. There is an enormous variety of structures that the aether might, for all we know, have. 2. Probably the aether is point-free. 3. In that case, it should be distinguished from Space-time, which is either a fiction or a construct. 4. Even if the aether has points, we should reject the orthodoxy that all regions are grounded in points by summation. 5. If the aether is point-free but not continuous, its most likely structure has extended atoms that are not simples. 6. Space-time is symmetric if and only if the aether is continuous. 7. If the aether is continuous, we should reject the standard interpretation of General Relativity, in which geometry determines gravity. 8. Contemporary physics undermines an objection to discrete aether based on scale invariance, but does not offer much positive support.

Introduction5
1. A Survey of Hypotheses about the Aether’s Structure31
2. Conflicting Intuitions60
3. Which Intuition to Abandon?75
4. Hypervolume and Topology105
5. The Problem with Differentiable Manifolds121
6. Contemporary Physics and Discrete Aether141
7. Symmetric Space-time177
Conclusions198
Glossary200
References215
Index225