Against Pointillisme about Geometry

@article{citeulike:2954929, abstract = {This paper forms part of a wider campaign: to deny pointillisme. That is the doctrine that a physical theory's fundamental quantities are defined at points of space or of spacetime, and represent intrinsic properties of such points or point-sized objects located there; so that properties of spatial or spatiotemporal regions and their material contents are determined by the point-by-point facts. More specifically, this paper argues against pointillisme about the structure of space and-or spacetime itself, especially a paper by Bricker (1993). A companion paper argues against pointillisme in mechanics, especially about velocity; it focusses on Tooley, Robinson and Lewis. To avoid technicalities, I conduct the argument almost entirely in the context of ``Newtonian'' ideas about space and time. But both the debate and my arguments carry over to relativistic, and even quantum, physics.}, author = {Butterfield, J. }, citeulike-article-id = {2954929}, eprint = {physics/0512063}, journal = {ArXiv Physics e-prints}, keywords = {geometry, metaphysics, philosophy, philsci, physics, space, time}, month = {December}, posted-at = {2008-07-03 05:25:14}, priority = {0}, title = {Against Pointillisme about Geometry}, url = {http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0512063}, year = {2005} }

TY - JOUR ID - citeulike:2954929 L3 - citeulike-article-id:2954929 TI - Against Pointillisme about Geometry JF - ArXiv Physics e-prints N2 - This paper forms part of a wider campaign: to deny pointillisme. That is the doctrine that a physical theory's fundamental quantities are defined at points of space or of spacetime, and represent intrinsic properties of such points or point-sized objects located there; so that properties of spatial or spatiotemporal regions and their material contents are determined by the point-by-point facts. More specifically, this paper argues against pointillisme about the structure of space and-or spacetime itself, especially a paper by Bricker (1993). A companion paper argues against pointillisme in mechanics, especially about velocity; it focusses on Tooley, Robinson and Lewis. To avoid technicalities, I conduct the argument almost entirely in the context of ``Newtonian'' ideas about space and time. But both the debate and my arguments carry over to relativistic, and even quantum, physics. KW - geometry KW - metaphysics KW - philosophy KW - philsci KW - physics KW - space KW - time AU - Butterfield, J PY - 2005/December// UR - http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0512063 ER -