Abstract
AbstractIn a recent article in this journal, Sus purports to account for what have been identified as the ‘two miracles’ of general relativity—that (1) the local symmetries of all dynamical equations for matter fields coincide, and (2) the symmetries of the dynamical equations governing matter fields coincide locally with the symmetries of the metric field—by application of the familiar result that every symmetry of the action is also a symmetry of the resulting equations of motion. In this reply, we argue that, while otherwise exemplary in its clarity, Sus’ paper fails in this regard, for it rests upon a illegitimate application of the aforementioned result. Thus, we conclude,paceSus, that these two miracles persist in general relativity.
Funder
John Templeton Foundation
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Subject
History and Philosophy of Science,Philosophy
Reference24 articles.
1. Baker, M. R., Kiriushchevac, N., & Kuzmin, S. (2021). Noether and Hilbert (metric) energy-momentum tensors are not, in general, equivalent. Nuclear Physics B, 962, 115240.
2. Brading, K. A. (2001). Symmetries, conservation laws, and Noether’s variational problem [D.Phil. thesis]. University of Oxford.
3. Brown, H. R. (2005). Physical relativity: Spacetime structure from a dynamical perspective. Oxford University Press.
4. Brown, H. R., & Brading, K. A. (2002). General covariance from the perspective of Noether’s theorems. Diálogos, 79, 59–86.
5. Brown, H. R., & Pooley, O. (2001). The origins of the spacetime metric: Bell’s Lorentzian pedagogy and its significance in general relativity. In Craig Callender & Nick Huggett (Eds.), Physics meets philosophy at the plank scale (pp. 256–272). Cambridge University Press.