The Singular Nature of Spacetime.

We consider to what extent the fundamental question of spacetime singularities is relevant for the philosophical debate about the nature of spacetime. After reviewing some basic aspects of the spacetime singularities within general relativity, we argue that the well known difficulty to localize them...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Publicado en:Philosophy of Science Vol. 74; no. 5; pp. 712 - 724
Autor principal: Lam, Vincent
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Cambridge University Press Dec2007
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Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
Descripción
Sumario:We consider to what extent the fundamental question of spacetime singularities is relevant for the philosophical debate about the nature of spacetime. After reviewing some basic aspects of the spacetime singularities within general relativity, we argue that the well known difficulty to localize them in a meaningful way may challenge the received metaphysical view of spacetime as a set of points possessing some intrinsic properties together with some spatiotemporal relations. Considering the algebraic formulation of general relativity, we argue that the spacetime singularities highlight the philosophically misleading dependence on the standard geometric representation of spacetime.