Customer Reviews

The Philosophy of Space and Time (Dover Books on Physics)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is an absolutely fabulous book about the foundations of special and general relativity. The author's deep understanding of and insight to these complex structures is beautifully displayed and explained using simple but nontrivial examples and very readable text. If you really want to understand relativity, you must read this book. The focus is not on formal mathematics but on the real, intuitive, content of the concepts and the mathematical theory.

If you have been confused by discussions of rigid rods, clocks, simultaneity etc. in other sources, check out Reichenbach's construction of the light geometry and his discussion of the indefinite space type. Want to understand how gravity affects spacetime but do not want to study differential geometry? Read Reichenbach's sections on the Riemannian spaces and his chapter about space and time in gravitational fields. No other source explains these relationships as clearly and without resorting to silly or trivial examples.

A beautiful scholarly book which is thoroughly accessible. The author's great love of the subject is much in evidence.

Reichenbach writes with clarity, reason and passion on a topic that is in much need of this still today. It is accessible to the astute layperson - there is some occasional math, but the text handles most of the important concepts. It is useful for anyone interested in the combined scientific and philosophical perspective of space and time.

Reichenbach, in the Introduction, rues the current estrangement of philosophy and science, longing for the "natural philosophy" of the past, where thinkers were well-versed in both areas.

So this book takes us through the philosophy of space and time accompanied and supported by empirical and theoretical scientific work. He seems to have little in the way of agenda or "-isms" to tout, nor is he inclined to spend much ink on rehashing historical debates or trivial examples. And although the book winds it way eventually to General Relativity, we are thankfully not dragged through the typical "Aristotlean view -> Galilean view -> Einsteinian view" that is so commonly used.

Instead, he begins by discussing Euclidean space, the nature of geometry and so on. Throughout, the notion of topology is a common thread. Time, simultaneity, Lorentz, Principle of Equivalence, and gravitational effects on the topology of spacetime, are some of the steps through the book.

In section 39, for example, he guides us on a detour entitled "The Analytic Treatment of Reimannian Spaces", just to carry "...the treatment of general geometry a little further." In four short pages and a modicum of equations, the nature of tensors as a natural mathematical consequence appear, effortlessly and painlessly.

All along, woven in, are cogent philosophical treatments of the topic currently under discussion. The book is a good example of the author's desire to see philosophy and science melded again, and good example of his prowess in both areas.

The reference to "A." which Mr. Ecce Nihil could not find is to a German book by Reichenbach, as written in the author's introduction at page xv. Reichenbach's book IS consistent. It is one of the few books on relativity explaining the question of clock synchronization properly and comprehensively ( in the sense of Bridgman's operational view ).

As a "layman" I have had difficulty understanding the "four-vector" system that Minkowski and Einstein formulated. Time does not seem to be a vector in the same way that space is; time is unidirectional, or perhaps my mind perceives it in this manner. Reichenbach tries to explain this geometry and it's consequences, and also tries to incorporate philosophy and epistemology in the discussion. He admits that physics uses mathematical abstractions that may or may not represent "reality".

I would recommend this book to those curious about the meaning of "space time" with the slight caveat that Reichenbach was a Positivist, and there are many who disagree with the basic philosophy of Positivism.

I picked this book up in search of some insights and a way to think about this thing that is "space and time". However I found it rather uninspiring. Firstly Reichenbach is too much of a positivist, trying to be too general about the relativity of geometry, and he is overly concerned about debating the view that Euclidean space is more natural. Related to this the flow of the book gets bogged down in the problem of visualisation. For example there is an extended analysis of a spherical geometry using a ridiculous geometric construction, which by the way is very hard to get through until you realise he has used the same definition for two different things. I wasn't pleased to go through that effort so as to know what being trapped between two spherical shells looks like in a spherical world! Although he does have a minor point to argue here.
Anyway, though the first two chapters were largely a waste of time over trivialities and geometric fantasies, at least the arguments were constructed well and without large gaps, and I was looking forward to getting into the chapter on space-time combined. However the section 27 came with a footnote: "We shall present at this point only a summary, for a complete presentation we must refer to A". Arrggh!!! Not only does it now become unreadable without a knowledge of "A", I can't find what "A" is, so this book does not stand on its own. At this point I'm afraid I gave up, I cannot read this sort of stuff in "summary", but must follow an argument, so I cannot tell whether Reichy in the end had some interesting insights.

I recommend "SPACE AND TIME IN SPECIAL RELATIVITY" by n david mermin for a thorough, complete understanding and, most importantly, lucid explanation of special relativity. I grew up on this book. I picked this book up after high school and read it cover to cover several times over. I regret to give such a negative review, but hindsight is 20/20. I really don't believe Reichenbach explains matters that well. I don't know if that is attributed to English being his second language or translation problems. The introduction by Rudolph Carnap is worthy of five stars. However, Reichenbach had a tendency to embrace nutty ideas. And these ideas obfuscated the topic he was talking about. His primary importance is not due to originality of ideas, but to being a member of the secret society known as the Berlin movement branch of the Vienna Circle and to slavish devotion to crediting Einstein with the relativity theory developed by Poincare and Lorentz. His life was spent serving propaganda against Germany in Germany's attempt to preserve its national cultural integrity, promoting the myth of Einstein's genius, and publishing apologetic works in support of the Humean type myopia of the Vienna Circle Analytic movement.