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The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 2008 59(4):821-834; doi:10.1093/bjps/axn046
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© The Author (2008). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Why Constructive Relativity Fails

John D. Norton

Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Center for Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260 USA http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton

jdnorton{at}pitt.edu


  Abstract

Constructivists, such as Harvey Brown, urge that the geometries of Newtonian and special relativistic spacetimes result from the properties of matter. Whatever this may mean, it commits constructivists to the claim that these spacetime geometries can be inferred from the properties of matter without recourse to spatiotemporal presumptions or with few of them. I argue that the construction project only succeeds if constructivists antecedently presume the essential commitments of a realist conception of spacetime. These commitments can be avoided only by adopting an extreme form of operationalism.

  1. Introduction
  2. The Construction Project
  3. Clocks
  4. The Spacetime Presumed
  5. Lorentz Covariance Is a Property of a Matter Theory and Spacetime
  6. Spatial Distances and Times Elapsed Are Properties of Spacetime
  7. Conclusion


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