How Weyl stumbled across electricity while pursuing mathematical justice

DOI10.1016/J.SHPSB.2008.06.003MaRDI QIDQ652789zbMATHOpenAlexFDO

Authors Alexander Afriat

Publication date 17 December 2011

Published in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. Part B. Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/0804.2947

zbMATH Keywords

electromagnetismgaugegravitationrelativityunificationWeyl

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

History of mathematics in the 20th century (01A60) History of relativity and gravitational theory (83-03)

Abstract: It is argued that Weyl's theory of gravitation and electricity came out of `mathematical justice': out of the equal rights direction and length. Such mathematical justice was manifestly at work in the context of discovery, and is enough (together with a couple of simple and natural operations) to derive all of source-free electromagnetism. Weyl's repeated references to coordinates and gauge are taken to express equal treatment of direction and length.

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Cites work

• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 3757277 (Why is no real title available?)
• Conservation of isotopic spin and isotopic gauge invariance
• Observer fields in Weylian spacetime models
• Unified field theories in the first third of the 20th century. Transl. from the Russian by Julian B. Barbour
• Wyl manifolds

Cited in

(5)

• Logic of Gauge
• The plasticine ball argument. Hermann Weyl, the homogeneity of space and Mach's principle
• 'But one must not legalize the mentioned sin': phenomenological vs. dynamical treatments of rods and clocks in Einstein's thought
• A brief note on Weyl frames and canonical transformations in geometrical scalar-tensor theories of gravity
• The relativity of inertia and reality of nothing

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