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The Status and Meaning of the Laws of Inertia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Robert Alan Coleman  and
Herbert Korte
Robert Alan Coleman
Affiliation:
Department of Mathematics & Statistics, Department of Philosophy, University of Regina, Regina S4S 0A2
Herbert Korte
Affiliation:
Department of Mathematics & Statistics, Department of Philosophy, University of Regina, Regina S4S 0A2
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Extract

A great deal of literature on the status and meaning of the Laws of Inertia in spacetime theories has nurtured and given wide currency to the claim that the laws are conventional in character, that they are definitions, or circular and without empirical content.

Philosophers who argue for the conventional character of the laws, do so, either emphasizing epistemological or ontological considerations concerning the structure of spacetime.

Those who argue for their conventional character mainly on epistemic grounds, point out, that the laws do not supply independent criteria of what is to count as force-free or natural motion. The only way of knowing when no forces act on a body is that it moves as a free particle traveling along the geodesies of spacetime. But how, without already knowing the geodetic structure of spacetime is one to determine which particles are free and which are not?

Type
Part VI. Philosophy of Physics
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1982 , Issue 1: Volume One: Contributed Papers 1982 , 1982 , pp. 257 - 274
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1982

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