Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T05:28:36.321Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

What Is a Physically Reasonable Space-Time?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

John Byron Manchak
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Cosmologists often use certain global properties to exclude “physically unreasonable” cosmological models from serious consideration. But, on what grounds should these properties be regarded as physically unreasonable if we cannot rule out, even with a robust type of inductive reasoning, the possibility of the properties obtaining in our own universe?

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 78 , Issue 3 , July 2011 , pp. 410 - 420
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

‡

I am grateful to Jeff Barrett, Bob Geroch, David Malament, John Norton, and Kyle Stanford for comments on an earlier draft. I also wish to thank audiences at Pittsburgh and Oxford for valuable discussions.

References

Beem, J. 1980. “Minkowski Space-Time Is Locally Extendible.” Communications in Mathematical Physics 72:273–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chandrasekhar, S., and Hartle, J. B.. 1982. “On Crossing the Cauchy Horizon of a Reissner-Nordström Black-Hole.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A 348:301–15.Google Scholar
Clarke, C. J. S. 1976. “Spacetime Singularities.” Communications in Mathematical Physics 49:17–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clarke, C. J. S.. 1993. The Analysis of Space-Time Singularities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Earman, J. 1995. Bangs, Crunches, Whimpers, and Shrieks: Singularities and Acausalities in Relativistic Spacetimes. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Earman, J.. 2002. “What Time Reversal Invariance Is and Why It Matters.” International Journal for the Philosophy of Science 16:245–64.Google Scholar
Earman, J.. 2008. “Pruning Some Branches from ‘Branching Spacetimes.’” In The Ontology of Spacetime II, ed. Dieks, D., 187–205. Amsterdam: Elsevier.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellis, G. F. R. 1975. “Cosmology and Verifiability.” Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society 16:245–64.Google Scholar
Ellis, G. F. R.. 2007. “Issues in the Philosophy of Cosmology.” In Handbook of the Philosophy of Physics, ed. Butterfield, J. and Earman, J., 1183–1286. Oxford: Elsevier.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellis, G. F. R., and Schmidt, B. G.. 1977. “Singular Spacetimes.” General Relativity and Gravitation 8:915–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geroch, R. 1970. “Singularities.” In Relativity, ed. Carmeli, M., Fickler, S. I., and Witten, L., 259–91. New York: Plenum.Google Scholar
Geroch, R.. 1971a. “General Relativity in the Large.” General Relativity and Gravitation 2:61–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geroch, R.. 1971b. “Spacetime Structure from a Global Viewpoint.” In General Relativity and Cosmology, ed. Sachs, B. K., 71–103. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Geroch, R.. 1977. “Prediction in General Relativity.” In Foundations of Space-Time Theories, ed. Earman, J., Glymour, C., and Stachel, J., 81–93. Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. 8. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Glymour, C. 1972. “Topology, Cosmology, and Convention.” Synthese 24:195–218.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glymour, C.. 1977. “Indistinguishable Space-Times and the Fundamental Group.” In Foundations of Space-Time Theories, ed. Earman, J., Glymour, C., and Stachel, J., 50–60. Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. 8. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Hawking, S. W., and Ellis, G. F. R.. 1973. The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Joshi, P. 1993. Global Aspects in Gravitation and Cosmology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Krasinkov, S. 2009. “Even the Minkowski Space Is Holed.” Physical Review D 79:124041.Google Scholar
Malament, D. 1977. “Observationally Indistinguishable Space-Times.” In Foundations of Space-Time Theories, ed. Earman, J., Glymour, C., and Stachel, J., 61–80. Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. 8. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Manchak, J. B. 2009a. “Can We Know the Global Structure of Spacetime?” Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 40:53–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Manchak, J. B.. 2009b. “Is Spacetime Hole-Free?” General Relativity and Gravitation 41:1639–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morris, M. S., Thorne, K. S., and Yurtsever, U.. 1988. “Wormholes, Time Machines, and the Weak Energy Condition.” Physical Review Letters 61:1446–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Norton, J. 2008. “The Dome: An Unexpectedly Simple Failure of Determinism.” Philosophy of Science 75:786–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Penrose, R. 1969. “Gravitational Collapse: The Role of General Relativity.” Revisita del Nuovo Cimento, 1st ser., 1:252–76.Google Scholar
Penrose, R.. 1979. “Singularities and Time-Asymmery.” In General Relativity: An Einstein Centenary Survey, ed. Hawking, S. and Israel, W., 581–638. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Penrose, R.. 1999. “The Question of Cosmic Censorship.” Journal of Astrophysics and Astronomy 20:233–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steinmüller, B., King, A. R., and Lasota, J. P.. 1975. “Radiating Bodies and Naked Singularities.” Physics Letters A 51:191–92.Google Scholar
Wainwright, J., and Ellis, G. F. R.. 1996. The Dynamical Systems Approach to Cosmology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wald, R. 1984. General Relativity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar