Starting next week this column will feature books from the “Author Meets Critics” sessions of the Central APA 2017. But until then I am continuing with the trend I began last week and featuring a philosopher whose birthday is coming up: Albert Einstein (born March 14, 1879). While known primarily as a physicist in society at large, Einstein’s thoughts on matter, truth, space, time, and reality have affected philosophy significantly. His theories pose challenges to certain realist ontologies, Kant’s doctrine of the a priori, and the possibility of developing a fully determinate theory of reality, among other things (a good description of Einstein’s contributions can be found at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Here are several recent papers on Einstein’s influence:
- Jeremy Butterfield, “Stochastic Einstein Locality Revisited,” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, December 2007.
- Friedel Weinert, “Einstein and Kant,” Philosophy, October 2005.
- Marco Giovanelli, “Talking at cross-purposes: how Einstein and the logical empiricists never agreed on what they were disagreeing about,” Synthese, November 2013.
- Miklós Rédei, “Einstein’s dissatisfaction with nonrelativistic quantum mechanics and relativistic quantum field theory,” Philosophy of Science, December 2010.
- Hashi Hisaki, “The Significance of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity in Nishida’s ‘Logic of Field,’” Philosophy East and West, October 2007.
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Have a suggestion for the What Are You Reading column? Contact us here.
Here a suggestion: Critics of time as dimension
I can agree with a simple remark that Popper objected to Einstein observation that space and time are deterministic observables, as I read in a biography of the same K. Popper. He said to Einstein that we have no experience of a “dimension” (spatial or temporal), this an entirely theoretical concept of which we have no immediate sensation.
So the concept of dimensions absolutely needs a deep philosophical attention, and investigation, for example about where locating existence of dimensions (namely of their theory): inside minds, external material world, culture, or what-else?
Albert Einstein’s century old theory about gravitational waves has been proved correct!!!