On The General Principle of Relativity

Abstract

This thesis re-examined the meaning of the statements on the “general principle of relativity” by Einstein at different eras We found that the same terminology “general principle of relativity” in these statements actually carries three different meanings In this thesis we call them “the principle of objectivity” in the weak sense “the gauge principle” in the strong sense and “the Mach’s principle” in the very strong sense The weak version “the principle of objectivity” corresponds to the requirement of the diffeomorphism symmetry of the background in the physical laws The strong version “the gauge principle” is a synthesis of the principle of equivalence hole argument and the local conservation law of energy-momentum tensor field guiding Einstein to develop a field theory of gravitation The very strong version “the Mach’s principle” is an additional ontological requirement to general relativity stipulating that the inertio-gravitational field must be posterior to the energy-momentum tensor field of matter Moreover in order to argue that general relativity has the general features of a gauge theory we compare the equations in general relativity with those in Yang-Mills theory and discuss the related issues

Date of Award	2019
Original language	English
Supervisor	Rue-Ron Hsu (Supervisor)