Einstein's Relativity And The Quantum Revolution Wolfson

An appreciable part of the scientific community seems to believe that contemporary physical theories are likely to affect the construction of any overall philosophical outlook, especially insofar as they are relevant to the settlement of certain persistent philosophical controversies. Two physical conceptions - the theory of relativity and the quantum theory - which have brought about a reformulation of the fundamental principles common to all the natural sciences, are considered particularly important in this regard. These conceptions have shed new light, it is held, on a number of problems involving empiricism and rationalism, determinism and indeterminism, materialism and spiritualism, idealism and realism. Such philosophical implications of the theory of relativity and quantum theory have been Widely discussed by both philosophers and philosophizing physicists. The trend in this development has been to portray these theories as generally conducive to an idealist stance.

This expanded second edition of Relativity and the Nature of Spacetime c- tains several major changes and a number of additions to different ch- ters. Two chapters (Chaps. 6 and 7), which discussed two speci?c groups of arguments against the reality of spacetime, have been transformed into - pendices (A and B). Two new chapters (Chaps. 6 and 10) have been added. Chapter 6, entitled Why Is the Issue of the Nature of Spacetime So Imp- tant?, elaborates on what was Sect. 5. 6 of the ?rst edition, and addresses some recent work on the nature of spacetime – for example, the growing (or evolving) block universe model of the world, which has recently been - vived by several physicists as what appears to be the last remaining alter- tive to the Minkowski absolute four-dimensional world (after it had become an undeniable fact that three-dimensionalism, or presentism, contradicts the relativistic experimental evidence). Chapter 10, entitled Spacetime and the Nature of Quantum Objects and based on what used to be Sects. 6. 2 and 6. 3 in the ?rst edition, explores the implications of the issue of the nature of spacetime for quantum physics, in order to see whether it can provide some insight into the nature of quantum objects. Two new sections have been included, namely, Sect. 5. 6 entitled Re- tivization of Existence and Observers in General Relativity and Sect. 7. 6 - titled Probing the Anisotropic Velocity of Light by a Terrestrial Experiment.