Greetings all,
Next Monday (August 27th) 1.00-2.30 in the philosophy common room
Paul Redding, The University of Sydney, will talk about:
"From object naturalism, to subject
naturalism, to idealism (On Price's "Naturalism without
Representationalism)"
Then the calendar is as follows:
September 3
Alexis Burgess, Stenaford
"Regarding Regret"
September 10
Jenann Ismael, The University of Sydney
TBA
September 17
Peter Godfrey-Smith, Harvard
TBA
September 24
John August
The Ritzian Alternative to Relativity
Rather than transforming space, time and mass, as does the Special
Theory of Relativity, Ritzian theory alters the force between objects,
while maintaining fixed space, resulting in the same observable quantity
: acceleration.
Ritzian theory was developed by Walther Ritz as an alternative to
Maxwell- Lorentz electrodynamics. While Maxwell's theory posits
interactions between charges and fields at empty points in space, Ritz's
theory focuses on the forces between charged particles as a function of
charge and distance - but importantly also velocity, acceleration and
higher order changes in distance. In this way, the interaction between
charges is inherently "Relativistic" without any reference to an ether,
while the Lorentz transforms must be incorporated into Maxwell's theory
for it to achieve the same status.
Ritzian theory is able to mirror experimental results of Special
Relativity - at least qualitatively, and in some cases quantititatively.
However, this difference is the result of the effort which has been
directed at Special Relativity compared to Ritzian theory.
Nevertheless, Ritzian theory and Special Relativity do have important
differences - amongst them velocity addition. As a result, we are able
to develop experiments which would distinguish between the different
theories, quite apart from any arguments as to the worth of Relativity
and whether or not it has problems like paradoxes.
Dr. Kristie Miller
ARC Post-doctoral Fellow
School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry and
The Centre for Time
The University of Sydney
Sydney Australia
Room 411, A 18
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Ph: 02 93569663
http://homepage.mac.com/centre.for.time/KristieMiller/Kristie/Home%
20Page.html
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