Search results for "Absolute time and space"
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The Phenomenology of Space and Time: Husserl, Sartre, Derrida
2016
The notions of space and time have been a subject of philosophical discussion since antiquity. In modern philosophy, Newton’s concepts of absolute space and absolute time was subject to criticism by empiricists like Berkeley and Hume, who prepared the ground for Einstein and the ideas behind his theories of relativity. In this article, I will consider the concept of space-time from a phenomenological point of view, with particular reference to Jean-Paul Sartre and Jacques Derrida. Sartre presents a phenomenological notion of space as nothingness, and I argue that this notion corresponds closely to Einstein's view, and can be extended to include the notion of time, and hence of space-time. I…
Geometry and “Metaphysics of Space” in Gauss and Riemann
1994
Gauss’s research on the principles of geometry and the axiom of parallels have been the subject of study for long time (e.g. Stackel 1933) which has shed light once and for all on his role in the early history of non-Euclidean geometry. It is therefore unnecessary to go through it all over again; what is more interesting here is to examine the development of Gauss’s ideas from another standpoint which emerges from the first testimony of his reflections on a subject that mathematicians had examined in vain right from antiquity: i.e. the possibility of proving the proposition that Euclid had taken as an axiom and formulated in the following terms: “That, if a straight line falling on two stra…
The Mathematicians’ Happy Hunting Ground: Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity
2004
There is hardly any doubt that for physics special relativity theory is of much greater consequence than the general theory. The reverse situation prevails with respect to mathematics: there special relativity theory had comparatively little, general relativity theory very considerable, influence, above all upon the development of a general scheme for differential geometry. —Hermann Weyl, “Relativity as a Stimulus to Mathematical Research,” pp. 536–537.