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Joseph K. Cosgrove
History and Philosophical Foundations of Physics
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Article
Einstein’s Principle of Equivalence and the Heuristic Significance of General Covariance
The philosophy of physics literature contains conflicting claims on the heuristic significance of general covariance. Some authors maintain that Einstein's general relativity distinguishes itself from other th...
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Book
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Chapter
Erratum to: Relativity without Spacetime
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Chapter
Introduction: A Critique of Minkowski Spacetime
Cosgrove lays out the overall task of the book, which is to subject the concept of Minkowski spacetime in relativity theory to a comprehensive critique from a conceptual and historical perspective. Cosgrove fi...
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Chapter
Desedimentation of Minkowski Spacetime
Cosgrove here applies the historical findings of the previous two chapters to the concept of Minkowski spacetime. While the Minkowski spacetime interval is often called a “generalization” of the Pythagorean Th...
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Chapter
Relativity and Time
Cosgrove in this concluding chapter addresses the status of time in relativity theory in light of the critique of Minkowski spacetime. Cosgrove argues that although neither absolute simultaneity nor becoming o...
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Chapter
Special Relativity and Spacetime
In this chapter Cosgrove subjects the concept of Minkowski spacetime to critique in three principal respects: (1) the theory of spacetime articulates no clear meaning to the concept of a single continuum of sp...
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Chapter
The Historical Sense-Structure of Modern Algebraic Physics
The assimilation of Cartesian algebra into mathematical physics met with significant opposition, engendered by basic issues of physical intelligibility. In this chapter Cosgrove considers more closely those hi...
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Chapter
Minkowski Spacetime and General Relativity
Cosgrove demonstrates both that Minkowski spacetime taken as a physical concept is unnecessary to general relativity and that the mathematical apparatus of four-vectors is superfluous as well. He addresses the...
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Chapter
Minkowski’s “Space and Time”
This chapter is a critical reading of the published version of Minkowski’s 1908 Cologne address, in which the concept of four-dimensional spacetime was publically unveiled. Cosgrove places Minkowski’s endeavor...
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Chapter
The Historical Sense-Structure of Symbolic Algebra
Cosgrove shows that the conceptual obstacles to the assimilation of algebra into mathematical physics were successfully overcome from the late seventeenth through the eighteenth century, yielding a new mathema...
