Against Radical Relationalism: in Defense of the Ordinal Structure of Time

IF 1.2 3区物理与天体物理 Q3 PHYSICS, MULTIDISCIPLINARY

Foundations of Physics Pub Date : 2025-05-13 DOI:10.1007/s10701-025-00850-5

Álvaro Mozota Frauca

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Some authors in the quantum gravity community endorse, explicitly or implicitly, a radical relationalist view of time which states that the ordinal structure of time is not needed even in our classical theories, especially in general relativity. In this article I analyze this position and the arguments supporting it, and I argue that there are some serious concerns with some of the radical relationalists’ arguments which make it an unattractive position. In this sense, I conclude that the chrono-ordinal structures of our theories play important theoretical and explanatory roles and that they can be taken to be part of the empirical content of our theories.

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反对激进的关系主义：为时间的有序结构辩护

量子引力学界的一些作者或明或暗地赞同一种激进的关系主义时间观，这种时间观认为，即使在我们的经典理论中，特别是在广义相对论中，也不需要时间的序数结构。在这篇文章中，我分析了这一立场和支持它的论点，我认为，一些激进关系主义者的论点存在一些严重的问题，这些论点使它成为一个没有吸引力的立场。从这个意义上说，我的结论是，我们理论的时间顺序结构发挥着重要的理论和解释作用，它们可以被视为我们理论的经验内容的一部分。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Foundations of Physics 物理-物理：综合

CiteScore

2.70

自引率

6.70%

发文量

104

审稿时长

6-12 weeks

期刊介绍： The conceptual foundations of physics have been under constant revision from the outset, and remain so today. Discussion of foundational issues has always been a major source of progress in science, on a par with empirical knowledge and mathematics. Examples include the debates on the nature of space and time involving Newton and later Einstein; on the nature of heat and of energy; on irreversibility and probability due to Boltzmann; on the nature of matter and observation measurement during the early days of quantum theory; on the meaning of renormalisation, and many others. Today, insightful reflection on the conceptual structure utilised in our efforts to understand the physical world is of particular value, given the serious unsolved problems that are likely to demand, once again, modifications of the grammar of our scientific description of the physical world. The quantum properties of gravity, the nature of measurement in quantum mechanics, the primary source of irreversibility, the role of information in physics – all these are examples of questions about which science is still confused and whose solution may well demand more than skilled mathematics and new experiments. Foundations of Physics is a privileged forum for discussing such foundational issues, open to physicists, cosmologists, philosophers and mathematicians. It is devoted to the conceptual bases of the fundamental theories of physics and cosmology, to their logical, methodological, and philosophical premises. The journal welcomes papers on issues such as the foundations of special and general relativity, quantum theory, classical and quantum field theory, quantum gravity, unified theories, thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, cosmology, and similar.