Einstein and the changing worldviews of physics. In cooperation with John Beckman and Eric Stengler. Collected papers based on the presentations at the 7th international conference on the history of general relativity, La Orotava, Spain, March 6--13, 2005 (Q1047526)

The volume presents a collection of contributions to an interdisciplinary conference that took place in 2005 - a year marking both the centenary of Einstein's annus mirabilis and the fiftieth anniversary of his death. The conference was dedicated to the history and foundations of general relativity. The present volume is seen by the editors as a complement to the four-volume series [The Genesis of General Relativity. Sources and interpretations. 4 Volumes. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 250. Dordrecht: Springer (2007; Zbl 1216.83015)], which focuses on the emergence of Einstein's theory of gravitation from the knowledge of classical physics. The 18 contributions of the book are divided into four parts so that the articles are organized as follows: I. At the Limit of the Classical Worldview; II. Contexts of the Relativity Revolution; III. The Emergence of the Relativistic Worldview; and IV. A New Worldview in the Making. Part I of this volume collects papers dealing with the genesis of relativity theory. It opens with a review by J. Renn and M. Schemmel on theories of gravitation that were proposed prior to the advent of general relativity. This is followed by a paper by J. Eisenstaedt reminding of a nearly forgotten Newtonian theory of light propagation. It is shown that this Newtonian issue was not, but could have been a way to have the idea -- at least quantitatively -- of the action of gravitation on light. In his contribution, G. Wolters describes his sight at the relationship between Mach and Einstein. The articles in Part II pay attention to the fact that the cultural and political contexts of Einstein and his contemporaries played a role for the formulation, interpretation and reception of their scientific works. R. Schulmann's contribution traces Einstein's political views back to the pre-1905 Swiss period, which was such decisive for the development of Einstein's scientific work. J. M. Sánchez-Ron deals with the early reception of Einstein's (special and general) relativity theories among British philosophers. He demonstrates that these philosophers reacted quickly and that proponents of different philosophical standpoints argued that Einstein's new theories favored their philosophical positions. In reconstructing Einstein's visit to South America in 1925, A.T. Tolmasquim's describes the scientific, ideological and political motivations of different groups rejecting or supporting an invitation to Einstein to visit Argentina. He comes to the conclusion that, overall, when there were criticisms of the theory of relativity, then they were of a scientific nature and did not get into personal or political issues, as was often the case elsewhere. Concluding this Part, H. Goenner, considering the impact of Einstein's theories on literature and the arts, argues that this interaction did not create any important new stylistic direction and that Einstein's personality rather than his scientific theories fascinated artists and writers. In the first paper of the third Part collecting material under the keyword relativistic worldview, K. A. Brading and T. A. Ryckman reconsider Hilbert's two 'Communications' of 1915 and 1917 in the Nachrichten of the Göttingen academy with the aim to show that Hilbert intended to reconcile causality with the axiom of general covariance. In his contribution, D. Kennefick contradicts the myth that Eddington's personal bias played any sinister role in the analysis of the eclipse data and offers a new analysis of the question of the reliability of the 1919 results showing the light bending by gravitation. It follows two contributions that remind of the works of two prominent physicists who, in the spirit of Einstein, strongly influenced the development of general relativity for decades. H. Goenner describes life and work (of his mentor) Peter Havas, whose work was devoted to classical relativistic field and particle theories. D.C. Salisbury, formerly a student of Peter Bergmann, presents a report on Bergmann's essential achievements in the field of constrained Hamiltonian dynamics which is supplemented by brief biographical notes. The paper by B. F. Schutz discusses the conceptual framework of general relativity. The thesis is that general relativity, despite its essential mathematical completeness in 1916, did not become a complete theory of physics until the 1970s. For the author, the change became possible because heuristic concepts like black holes, gravitational waves and gravitational lenses were developed. This is insofar surprising as just black holes and gravitational waves are conceptually highly problematic. The papers of Part IV are written by physicists, who discuss recent developments in quantum theory, general relativity and relativistic cosmology that partly could also lead to a new view on those topics. J.E. Beckman gives a brief summary of the main current lines of observational (and in a few cases experimental) researches designed to test the class of metric theories of gravitation, with the conclusion that general relativity as a member of this class is in best agreement with all tests. In their contribution, E. Battaner and E. Florido argue that magnetic fields could play an important role in determining the parameters of cosmic microwave background radiation. If there were significant primordial fields the interpretation of the spectrum of the anisotropies of this radiation and, thus, current cosmological models would require modification. J. M. M. Senovilla presents a brief overview of the singularity theorems, which are often quoted as the greatest theoretical accomplishments in general relativity and mathematical physics. He discusses achievements and open questions. The following last three papers are devoted to the relationship between quantum theory and general relativity. R. M. Wald reports on the history and present status of quantum field theory in a given non-quantized curved space-time geometry. He shows that this theory has a great mathematical depth and concludes with the statement that, although it cannot be a fundamental description of nature since gravitation itself is treated classically, it seems hard to believe that it is not capturing some fundamental properties of nature. The open question, how to provide a non-perturbative theory of quantum fields interacting with space-time, is addressed in the respective papers by T. Dray and A. Ashtekar. After a brief tour of the progress which different approaches have been made, Dray speculates on the relevance of one possible generalization of traditional spinor language to quantum gravity. Finally, Ashtekar presents an up-to-date summary of the status of cosmological issues concerning the time within loop quantum gravity. He shows that the quantum nature of geometry dominates the physics near the ``big bang'', altering dynamics and drastically changing the paradigm provided by classical general relativity.