PHIL 219
A Brief History of Time, Space and Motion
Anja Jauernig
Course Description
We will examine the
historical evolution of our philosophical conceptions of time, space and motion
from Plato to Einstein. Special attention will be paid to the influence of
developments in physics on this evolution in philosophical theorizing (and vice
versa). Our discussion will include, for instance, Zeno’s paradoxes,
Newton’s famous arguments for the existence of absolute space, and
Leibniz’ notorious arguments against it. The three main questions that
will provide the focus for our reflections are: 1) what are the geometric
properties of space and time according to a given scientific theory T?, 2) what
kind of entities are space and time?, and 3) how can we get to know the answers
to questions 1) and 2)?
There is no text-book for
this course. The required readings consist of essays and selections from books
by various philosopher-scientists, which will be available on electronic
reserve. I have attached a list of books (and some articles) on the philosophy
of space and time, which provide a more general overview of the different
issues dealt with in this area of philosophy. These books also contain further
(and, in several cases, more technical) discussions of the questions that we
will be addressing, and you might find them useful in your preparation for the
exams or when writing your papers.
Schedule
Week I
Tue ~ Logistics, General
Introduction
Thurs ~ Euclid, Selections
from the Elements
Week II
Tue ~ Zeno’s Paradoxes,
Selections from Aristotle’s Physics and Simplicius’ commentary on
Aristotle
Thurs ~ Zeno continued
Week III
Tue ~ Plato, Selections from
the Timaeus, Aristotle, Physics, IV. 1-7, VIII, 4, On the
Heavens, I, 1-2, 8
Thurs ~ Aristotle continued
Week IV
Tue ~ Rene Descartes, Selections
from The Principles of Philosophy
Thurs ~ Descartes continued;
first assignment will be handed out in class
Week V
Tue ~ Isaac Newton,
Selections from ‘De Graviatione’, the Principia, and the Opticks; first short paper due in class
Thurs ~ Newton continued
Week VI
Tue ~ Gottfried Wilhelm
Leibniz, Selections from the Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence,
Specimum Dynamicum, and the Dynamica
Thurs ~ Leibniz continued
Week VII
Tue ~ Christian Huygens,
Selections from his Notes on Motion, and his letters to
Leibniz
Thurs ~ George Berkeley,
Selections from The Principles of Philosophy, and ‘De Motu’; take-home
mid-term exam questions will be handed out in class
Week VIII
Tue ~ Midterm due date,
Berkeley continued
Thurs ~ Roger Boscovich,
Selections from A Theory of Natural
Philosophy, Leonard Euler, ‘Reflections on Space and Time’
Week IX
Break
Week X
Tue ~ Immanuel Kant, ‘On the
First Ground of the Differentiation of the Regions in Space’, and selections
from the Critique of Pure Reason
Thurs ~ Kant continued
Week XI
Tue ~ Kant continued
Thurs ~ Ernst Mach,
Selections from the The Science of
Mechanics, Introduction to non-Euclidean geometry
Week XII
Tue ~ Henri Poincaré,
Selections from Science and Hypothesis, Hermann
Helmholtz, ‘On the Origin and Significance of the Geometric Axioms’, ‘On the
Facts underlying Geometry’
Thurs ~ Einstein, Selections
from ‘On the electrodynamics of moving bodies’, and the ‘Foundations of the
General Theory of Relativity’, second assignment will be handed out in class
Week XIII
Tue ~ Einstein continued, and
Hermann Minkowski, ‘Space and Time’, second short paper due in class
Thurs ~ The Modern Space-Time
view, review article by J. D. Norton
Week XIV
Tue ~ The Modern Space-Time
view continued, Howard Stein, ‘Newtonian Space-time’
Thurs ~ Thanksgiving
Week XV
Tue ~ Tim Maudlin, ‘Buckets
of Water and Waves of Space’, Laurence Sklar, ‘Inertia, Gravitation, and
Metaphysics’
Thurs ~ Earman and Norton,
‘What Price Substantivalism? The Hole Story’
Week XVI
Tue ~ Wrap-Up
Suggested Further Readings
Barbour, J.B., Absolute or
Relative Motion? A Study from a Machian Point of View of the Discovery and
Structure of Dynamical Theories, Cambridge, UK: Cambirdge University Press
(1989)
Butterfiled, J., Belot, G.,
Hogarth, M. (ed.), Spacetime, Dartmouth Pub. Co. (1996)
Earman, John, World Enough and Space-Time: Absolute versus Relational Theories of
Space and Time, MIT Press: Cambridge/Mass. (1989)
Friedman, Michael, Foundations of Space-Time Theories,
Princeton University Press: Princeton (1983)
Greenberg, M.J, Euclidean and
Non-Euclidean Geometries: Development and History, San Francisco, CA, W.H.
Freeman and Co. (1980)
Gruenbaum, Adolf, Philosophical Problems of Space and Time,
Reidel: Dordrecht (1973, 2nd ed.)
Huggett, Nick (ed.), Space
from Zeno to Einstein: classic readings with a contemporary commentary,
Cambridge, MIT Press (1999)
Jammer, Max, Concepts of Space: The History of Theories
of Space in Physics, Harvard University Press: Cambridge/Mass. (1954)
Kuhn, T.S., The Copernican
Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought,
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (1957)
Nerlich, Graham, The shape of Space, Cambridge University
Press: Cambridge (1976)
Reichenbach, Hans, ‘The
Theory of motion according to Newton, Leibniz, and Huygens’, reprinted in M.
Reichenbach (ed. and trans.), Modern
Philosophy of Science, Routledge and Kegan Paul (1959 [1924])
_____, The Philosophy of
Space and Time, translated b M. Reichenbach and J. Freud, New York: Dover
(1958)
Salmon, W.C., Space, Time, and Motion: A Philosophical
Introduction, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press (1980)
_____, Zeno’s Paradoxes,
Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merill (1970)
Sklar, L., Space, Time and Spacetime, University of
California Press: Berkeley (1974)
Stein, H., “Newtonian Space-Time”, in
The Texas Quarterly 10, no.3, 1967, 174-200
_____, ‘Some Philosophical Prehistory of
General Relativity’, in J. Earman, C. Glymour and J. Stachel (eds.), Foundations of Space-Time Theories, Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of
Science, vol. VIII, Minneapolis (1977)
Torretti, R., Philosophy of
Geometry from Riemann to Poincare, Reidel: Dordrecht (1978)
Van Cleve, James, and Robert E.
Frederick (eds.), The Philosophy of Right
and Left, Kluwer Academic Publishers: Dordrecht (1991)
Van Fraassen, Bas
C., Introduction to the Philosophy
of Time and Space, Columbia University Press: New York (1978)