Re: SUO: Re: One Stone Makes a Beach
Jon and Ted,
You're both right:
> JA: For information on space, time, spacetime, physical objects,
> physical processes, and so on, read books by mathematicians
> and physicicts.
>
> TD: "Spacetime," yes. "Space" and "time," no.
> Taken separately these are not physical concepts.
The qualifications for serious research in space, time, and
spacetime must include research-level depth in physics, mathematics,
metaphysics, and logic. Two of the very few people who have had
that level of depth in those subjects are Charles Sanders Peirce
and Alfred North Whitehead.
Whitehead wrote a book on relativity, in which he developed an
alternative to Einstein's theory of general relativity, but without
assuming that gravity warps space. It agrees with Einstein's version
in most respects, but there are some minor areas where it makes
different predictions. Physicists have taken it seriously and
carried out experiments to test the differences.
The general conclusions seem to be:
1. On some of the areas of disagreement, Einstein's version seems
to make better predictions.
2. It might be possible to revise Whitehead's version to give
a better agreement with experiment, but there is no need
to do so.
3. However, nobody has successfully brought gravity into the
Grand Unified Theory (GUT) with the other basic forces,
and having more than one alternative theory is useful for
providing some perspective for future research.
For Whitehead's metaphysics, see his _Process and Reality_,
which many people regard as the most profound book on ontology
written in the 20th century. And by the way, Whitehead did read
Bergson's work and said that it had been a strong influence on
his approach.
I believe that Peirce's semeiotic and Whitehead's process philosophy
are complementary and that a synthesis of both of them would make
the best available foundation for ontology. I wrote an article
that outlines my suggestions for following that recommendation:
http://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/signproc.htm
Following is a (still unfinished) paper, in which I develop the
presentation of processes and causality (and related topics on
space and time) in more detail:
http://www.jfsowa.com/ontology/causal.htm
John Sowa