On the invariance and intrinsicality of four-dimensional shapes in Special Relativity.
Are shapes of objects intrinsic to them? The issue has been intensely debated. Special relativity (SR) adds a new dimension to it by relativizing three-dimensional (3D) shapes not just to times, but to times-in-frames. Arguably, however, such relativized spatial shapes are mere perspectival represen...
| Publicado en: | Analysis Vol. 74; no. 4; pp. 608 - 613 |
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| Autor principal: | |
| Formato: | Artículo |
| Publicado: |
Oxford University Press / USA
Oct2014
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| Sumario: | Are shapes of objects intrinsic to them? The issue has been intensely debated. Special relativity (SR) adds a new dimension to it by relativizing three-dimensional (3D) shapes not just to times, but to times-in-frames. Arguably, however, such relativized spatial shapes are mere perspectival representations of an invariant, hence intrinsic, four-dimensional (4D) shape of an object in Minkowski spacetime. In a recent note, Matthew Davidson questions the intrinsicality of 4D shapes in SR. I show that his conclusion and the reasoning behind it are in error. |
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