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Maxwell Gravitation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Neil Dewar
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Abstract

This article gives an explicit presentation of Newtonian gravitation on the backdrop of Maxwell space-time, giving a sense in which acceleration is relative in gravitational theory. However, caution is needed: assessing whether this is a robust or interesting sense of the relativity of acceleration depends on some subtle technical issues and on substantive philosophical questions over how to identify the space-time structure of a theory.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 85 , Issue 2 , April 2018 , pp. 249 - 270
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†.

I am grateful to Erik Curiel, Eleanor Knox, Oliver Pooley, Simon Saunders, David Wallace, and Jim Weatherall for conversations about this material and comments on previous drafts, to audiences at the LMP Graduate Conference (London, ON) and Foundations of Physics Conference (London, UK) for questions and feedback, and to several anonymous referees for very helpful and detailed comments.

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