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The Discovery of Dynamics: A Study from a Machian Point of View of the Discovery and the Structure of Dynamical Theories
Ever since Newton created dynamics, there has been controversy about its foundations. Are space and time absolute? Do they form a rigid but invisible framework and container of the universe? Or are space, time, and motion relative? If so, does Newton's 'framework' arise through the influence of the universe at large, as Ernst Mach suggested? Einstein's aim when creating his general theory of relativity was to demonstrate this and thereby implement 'Mach's Principle'. However, it is widely believed that he achieved only partial success. This question of whether motion is absolute or relative has been a central issues in philosophy; the nature of time has perennial interest. Current attempts to create a quantum description of the whole universe keep these issues at the cutting edge of modern research.
Written by the world's leading expert on Mach's Principle, The Discovery of Dynamics is a highly original account of the development of notions about space, time, and motion. Widely praised in its hardback version, it is one of the fullest and most readable accounts of the astronomical studies that culminated in Kepler's laws of planetary motion and of the creation of dynamics by Galileo, Descartes, Huygens, and Newton. Originally published as Absolute or Relative Motion?, Vol. 1: The Discovery of Dynamics (Cambridge), The Discovery of Dynamics provides the technical background to Barbour's recently published The End of Time , in which he argues that time disappears from the description of the quantum universe.
Written by the world's leading expert on Mach's Principle, The Discovery of Dynamics is a highly original account of the development of notions about space, time, and motion. Widely praised in its hardback version, it is one of the fullest and most readable accounts of the astronomical studies that culminated in Kepler's laws of planetary motion and of the creation of dynamics by Galileo, Descartes, Huygens, and Newton. Originally published as Absolute or Relative Motion?, Vol. 1: The Discovery of Dynamics (Cambridge), The Discovery of Dynamics provides the technical background to Barbour's recently published The End of Time , in which he argues that time disappears from the description of the quantum universe.
784 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
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About the author
Julian Barbour
8 books90 followersJulian Barbour (1937) is a British physicist with research interests in quantum gravity and the history of science.
Since receiving his PhD degree on the foundations of Einstein's general theory of relativity at the University of Cologne in 1968, Barbour has supported himself and his family without an academic position, working part-time as a translator. He has research interests in quantum gravity and the history of science.
Since receiving his PhD degree on the foundations of Einstein's general theory of relativity at the University of Cologne in 1968, Barbour has supported himself and his family without an academic position, working part-time as a translator. He has research interests in quantum gravity and the history of science.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 9, 2007
A wonderful, deep run through of theories of motion up to and including Newton. When reading this book -- like when first going through A Wrinkle in Time -- I could actually feel my head crack open. It's not easy going, but is it ever worth it.
December 17, 2022
A monumentous study of the discovery of dynamics, and this represented only half of the potential full work. Clarifies a lot of common points of misunderstanding even in popular accounts of these things to this day. Puts absolute space and time in their true light. And explains why, even though largely fallacious, they were critical for providing a framework for dynamics at the time.
Questions remain about the true nature of inertia and mass, and how far a relational account of space and time can be taken. I do not think hiding behind Mach's positivism and operational definitions here is adequate, like at the time of this book the author seemed to think so. Even the most avowed empiricists smuggle in theoretical concepts that underpin their work. And he illustrated himself in the book, with Neumanns ideas of body alpha, that it is important to form a basic hypothesis of untestable assumptions clearly to help future progress.
The danger was, and remains, with positivist style approaches in physics, of deferring to empirical data is that they tend to obscure their own theoretical foundations and as a result block further progress. On top of this, those theoretical assumptions of one generation, become the unquestioned dogmas of the next few generations. So if we do not explicate them clearly, it makes it more difficult to uproot them and make further progress. This kind of area, I think Barbour, at least at the time of this book, was quite naive about the limitations of a pure empiricism or positivism.
And the 20th century has shown that conceptual issues are back in the forefront. Indeed Barbours own work with shape space and his new theory of time illustrate this. His view of Platonia and a timeless shape space, could be, like Neumanns body alpha, the next reduction to absurdity hypothesis that shows us something is wrong in our theoretical physics and its core ontological assumptions. Like Neumann exposed it with Newtons Absolute Space, timeless Platonia I think in the long run could expose the limitations of the block universe space-time ontology, which is so often smuggled in by those with pretensions to pure empiricism and positivism.
These are very minor criticisms and I could well even turn out to be wrong on them. And they are not directly relevant to basically all of the content of this book except the last little section about Mach. Overall, it remains the best, most honest and most thorough-going attempt I have seen through dynamics to underpin the reality of motion insofar as there is a reality to it, in line with Galileo's desire all that time ago to prove the motion of the earth in defiance of the Inquisition raised against him.
The most incisive distillation of the key idea I learned from this book, is that in dynamics we learned that we need a reference body to be materialised before we can then orient all other bodies around it. This makes a full relativisation of motion and dynamics based on a rational account impossible, but it also, given the aribtrariness of the material body chosen and its superfluity from that time on, renders absolute space a shadow of the ontological structure it had hoped to be in the hands of Newton who desired not merely for it to reveal accelerations, but also translational motions. We are left with an elephant in the room of Straight rectilinear inertial motion, of cosmic drift, that cannot be accounted for solely based on the relativity of Gallilean inertial frames. The story of relativity in the 20th century is the story of the attempt to reconcile these things and to reconcile them also with a concept of mass. Most of the work, though not mentioned in this volume, I would presume is done by hypothesising the constancy of the speed of light for all Gallilean inertial frames of reference.)
(Yet, given his later work on the illusion of time in shape space, does this not mean that motion would also be an illusion. Just like we seem to have lost a reality to gravity as an illusion cause by space-time curvature.)(These are questions related to the 20th century developments which were promised in a second volume that was not forthcoming. Instead we are given his book, The end of time, which covers some of these questions, but not as rigorously and completely as does this book cover up to the end of the 19th century in dynamics. This may well be par for the course, given that the 20th century developments are still part of an ongoing discussion and debate as to the correct theoretical interpretations to make of them.)
Questions remain about the true nature of inertia and mass, and how far a relational account of space and time can be taken. I do not think hiding behind Mach's positivism and operational definitions here is adequate, like at the time of this book the author seemed to think so. Even the most avowed empiricists smuggle in theoretical concepts that underpin their work. And he illustrated himself in the book, with Neumanns ideas of body alpha, that it is important to form a basic hypothesis of untestable assumptions clearly to help future progress.
The danger was, and remains, with positivist style approaches in physics, of deferring to empirical data is that they tend to obscure their own theoretical foundations and as a result block further progress. On top of this, those theoretical assumptions of one generation, become the unquestioned dogmas of the next few generations. So if we do not explicate them clearly, it makes it more difficult to uproot them and make further progress. This kind of area, I think Barbour, at least at the time of this book, was quite naive about the limitations of a pure empiricism or positivism.
And the 20th century has shown that conceptual issues are back in the forefront. Indeed Barbours own work with shape space and his new theory of time illustrate this. His view of Platonia and a timeless shape space, could be, like Neumanns body alpha, the next reduction to absurdity hypothesis that shows us something is wrong in our theoretical physics and its core ontological assumptions. Like Neumann exposed it with Newtons Absolute Space, timeless Platonia I think in the long run could expose the limitations of the block universe space-time ontology, which is so often smuggled in by those with pretensions to pure empiricism and positivism.
These are very minor criticisms and I could well even turn out to be wrong on them. And they are not directly relevant to basically all of the content of this book except the last little section about Mach. Overall, it remains the best, most honest and most thorough-going attempt I have seen through dynamics to underpin the reality of motion insofar as there is a reality to it, in line with Galileo's desire all that time ago to prove the motion of the earth in defiance of the Inquisition raised against him.
The most incisive distillation of the key idea I learned from this book, is that in dynamics we learned that we need a reference body to be materialised before we can then orient all other bodies around it. This makes a full relativisation of motion and dynamics based on a rational account impossible, but it also, given the aribtrariness of the material body chosen and its superfluity from that time on, renders absolute space a shadow of the ontological structure it had hoped to be in the hands of Newton who desired not merely for it to reveal accelerations, but also translational motions. We are left with an elephant in the room of Straight rectilinear inertial motion, of cosmic drift, that cannot be accounted for solely based on the relativity of Gallilean inertial frames. The story of relativity in the 20th century is the story of the attempt to reconcile these things and to reconcile them also with a concept of mass. Most of the work, though not mentioned in this volume, I would presume is done by hypothesising the constancy of the speed of light for all Gallilean inertial frames of reference.)
(Yet, given his later work on the illusion of time in shape space, does this not mean that motion would also be an illusion. Just like we seem to have lost a reality to gravity as an illusion cause by space-time curvature.)(These are questions related to the 20th century developments which were promised in a second volume that was not forthcoming. Instead we are given his book, The end of time, which covers some of these questions, but not as rigorously and completely as does this book cover up to the end of the 19th century in dynamics. This may well be par for the course, given that the 20th century developments are still part of an ongoing discussion and debate as to the correct theoretical interpretations to make of them.)
October 18, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews