(no subject)

[timelets]

There seems to be a direct connection between Born's argument and CT.

This root of the matter is a very simple logical distinction which seems to be
obvious to anybody not biased by a solipsistic metaphysics; namely this : that often a measurable quantity is not a property of a thing, but a property of its relation to other things.

In every physical theory there is a rule which connects the projections of the same object
on different systems of reference, called a law of transformation, and all these transformations have the property of forming a group, i.e. the sequence of two consecutive transformations is a transformation of the same kind.

DOI 10.2307/2216882

Developing a new paradigm necessarily involves construction of a new frame of reference. For example, Newton was highly successful at creating new frames of reference for time and space. Born notes it in his Nobel speech.

Newtonian mechanics is deterministic in the following sense: If the initial state (positions and velocities of all particles) of a system is accurately given, then the state at any other time (earlier or later) can be calculated from the laws of mechanics. All the other branches of classical physics have been built up according to this model. Mechanical determinism gradually became a kind of article of faith: the world as a machine, an automaton. As far as I can see, this idea has no forerunners in ancient and medieval philosophy.* The idea is a product of the immense success of Newtonian mechanics, particularly in astronomy. In the 19th century it became a basic philosophical principle for the whole of exact science. I asked myself whether this was really justified. Can absolute predictions really be made for all time on the basis of the classical equations of motion?

* A new default worldview.