Article ID: CBB000933694

Tuning up Mind's Pattern to Nature's Own Idea: Eddington's Early Twenties Case for Variational Derivatives (2010)

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This paper sets out to show how Eddington's early twenties case for variational derivatives significantly bears witness to a steady and consistent shift in focus from a resolute striving for objectivity towards selective subjectivism and structuralism. While framing his so-called Hamiltonian derivatives along the lines of previously available variational methods allowing to derive gravitational field equations from an action principle, Eddington assigned them a theoretical function of his own devising in The Mathematical Theory of Relativity (1923). I make clear that two stages should be marked out in Eddington's train of thought if the meaning of such variational derivatives is to be adequately assessed. As far as they were originally intended to embody the mind's collusion with nature by linking atomicity of matter with atomicity of action, variational derivatives were at first assigned a dual role requiring of them not only to express mind's craving for permanence but also to tune up mind's privileged pattern to Nature's own idea. Whereas at a later stage, as affine field theory would provide a framework for world-building, such Hamiltonian differentiation would grow out of tune through gauge-invariance and, by disregarding how mathematical theory might precisely come into contact with actual world, would be turned into a mere heuristic device for structural knowledge

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Authors & Contributors
Stanley, Matthew
Tuboly, Adam Tamas
Blum, Alexander S.
Rocci, Alessio
Zinkernagel, H.
Weart, Spencer R.
Concepts
Physics
Relativity, general
Quantum mechanics
Relativity
Philosophy of science
Scientific expeditions
Time Periods
20th century, early
20th century
21st century
20th century, late
Places
Great Britain
Germany
United States
Portugal
Europe
Brazil
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