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    Carmelics

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    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Mach's Principle was successfully incorporated into Einstein's general theory of relativity

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Einstein's field equations admit vacuum solutions, most notably the Schwarzschild solution and flat Minkowski spacetime.
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    • 2.The existence of well-defined spacetime metric in vacuum directly contradicts the Machian requirement that inertia be determined by matter distribution.
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    • 3.Einstein himself acknowledged by 1918 that GR does not fully satisfy Mach's Principle, coining the term while recognizing the theory's incompleteness on this point.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.Gödel's 1949 rotating universe solution to Einstein's field equations permits closed timelike curves and absolute rotation independent of distant matter.
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    • 2.A theory permitting Gödel spacetime cannot have incorporated Mach's Principle, since that solution restores an absolute rotational standard Mach explicitly rejected.
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    • 3.Dennis Sciama and later Julian Barbour demonstrated that genuine Machian theories require relational mechanics fundamentally distinct from GR's geometric framework.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.Mach's Principle requires that inertial structure cannot exist in the absence of matter
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    • 2.Einstein's field equations admit no vacuum solutions for a static universe
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    • 3.The non-existence of vacuum solutions shows that the metric cannot be determined without matter
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