• DOI:10.1093/bjps/28.3.215
Corpus ID: 119773504

Relationism and Relativity

@article{Gardner1977RelationismAR,
  title={Relationism and Relativity},
  author={M. R. Gardner},
  journal={The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science},
  year={1977},
  volume={28},
  pages={215 - 233}
}

M. R. Gardner

Published 1977

Mathematics

The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science

In the seventeenth century a famous debate occurred between Newton and Leibniz on the question of whether space is an entity in its own right, or merely a system of relations of bodies. Near the end of the nineteenth century Mach attempted to defend the Leibnizian relationist view by putting forth what is now called Mach's principle: (roughly) that the fixed stars can play the role in physics which Newton attributed to space. And early in the twentieth century Einstein claimed to have… CONTINUE READING

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