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Time, Structure and Evolution in Cosmology

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Revisiting the Foundations of Relativistic Physics

Abstract

The primary task of theoretical physics is to understand why the world is arranged the way we find it, and not otherwise. As such, we invent theories in which we take some aspects of the world and some principles to be fundamental, and try to understand how everything else can be understood in terms of them. As Einstein emphasized, we have a free choice of which elements of reality and which principles we choose to be fundamental, and which secondary (Einstein 1934). Because of this it can and does happen that at certain steps in the development of science we find it convenient or useful to choose very different starting points, from which very different things can be thought of as fundamental.

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  1. Pennsylvania State University, USA

    Lee Smolin

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Jürgen Renn Lindy Divarci Petra Schröter Abhay Ashtekar Robert S. Cohen Don Howard Sahotra Sarkar Abner Shimony

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Smolin, L. (2003). Time, Structure and Evolution in Cosmology. In: Renn, J., et al. Revisiting the Foundations of Relativistic Physics. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0111-3_10

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