아인슈타인의 홀 논변과 로벨리의 공간, 시간, 동역학적 관계론

Abstract

The nature of space has been discussed within a competitive metaphysical framework between two opposing standpoints: substantivalism and relationalism. The former takes space to be a substance that, much like a material body, maintains its own independent existence, whereas the latter understands space as consisting of relations among bodies. On the standard interpretation, the debates on the nature of space in Descartes, Newton, Leibniz, and Einstein are disputes between these substantivalist and relationalist metaphysical positions. This paper highlights how, in the course of unifying Einstein’s general relativity and quantum mechanics, Rovelli’s strategy inherits and develops the relational conception of space found in Descartes, Leibniz, and Einstein. In Rovelli’s Loop Quantum Gravity, the principle of general covariance — that physics has the same form in all coordinate systems — provides the driving force behind the construction of the theory. Rovelli’s relationalism is brought out with particular clarity in his heuristic treatment of The Hole Argument, originally formulated by Leibniz and Einstein and later taken up by Earman and Norton. His sustained concern with The Hole Argument is rooted in his philosophical standpoint and functions as an important guiding principle in his formulation of physics. In this same spirit, Rovelli consistently pushes Einstein’s general covariance to its limit, attempting to render even dynamics fully relational. Consequently, his relationalism expands from that of a relational account of space, to a relational account of time, and further to relational dynamics and a relational interpretation of quantum mechanics.