- #1
victorvmotti
- 155
- 5
Reading the English translation of Einstein's seminal paper on GR.
http://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu/vol6-trans/90?ajax
This paragraph below on p78 doesn't make much sense to me.
Could you provide a second English translation or even adding math notation.
"Before Maxwell, the laws of nature with respect to their space dependence were in principle integral laws; this is to say that in elementary laws the distances between finitely distinct points did occur. Euclidean geometry is the basis for this description of nature. This geometry means originally only the essence of conclusions from geometric axioms; in this regard it has no physical content. But geometry becomes a physical science by adding the statement that two points of a "rigid" body shall have a distinct distance from each other that is independent of the position of the body. After this amendment, the theorems of this amended geometry are (in a physical sense) either factually true or not true. It is geometry in this extended sense which forms the basis of physics. Seen from this aspect, the theorems of geometry are to be looked as integral laws of physics insofar as they deal with distance of points *at a finite range*."
http://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu/vol6-trans/90?ajax
This paragraph below on p78 doesn't make much sense to me.
Could you provide a second English translation or even adding math notation.
"Before Maxwell, the laws of nature with respect to their space dependence were in principle integral laws; this is to say that in elementary laws the distances between finitely distinct points did occur. Euclidean geometry is the basis for this description of nature. This geometry means originally only the essence of conclusions from geometric axioms; in this regard it has no physical content. But geometry becomes a physical science by adding the statement that two points of a "rigid" body shall have a distinct distance from each other that is independent of the position of the body. After this amendment, the theorems of this amended geometry are (in a physical sense) either factually true or not true. It is geometry in this extended sense which forms the basis of physics. Seen from this aspect, the theorems of geometry are to be looked as integral laws of physics insofar as they deal with distance of points *at a finite range*."