The Role of Gravitation in Physics: Report from the 1957 Chapel Hill Conference

298 Pages·2011·11.689 MB·English

by  Dean Rickles, Cécile M. DeWitt (eds.)

The Role of Gravitation in Physics
Report from the 1957 Chapel Hill Conference
ii
Max Planck Research Library
for the History and Development
of Knowledge
Series Editors
Jürgen Renn, Robert Schlögl, Bernard F. Schutz.
Edition Open Access Development Team
Lindy Divarci, Beatrice Gabriel, Jörg Kantel, Matthias Schemmel, and
Kai Surendorf, headed by Peter Damerow.
Scientific Board
Markus Antonietti, Ian Baldwin, Antonio Becchi, Fabio Bevilacqua,
William G. Boltz, Jens Braarvik, Horst Bredekamp, Jed Z. Buchwald,
Olivier Darrigol, Thomas Duve, Mike Edmunds, Yehuda Elkana, Olaf
Engler, Robert K. Englund, Mordechai Feingold, Rivka Feldhay, Gideon
Freudenthal, Paolo Galluzzi, Kostas Gavroglu, Mark Geller, Domenico
Giulini, Günther Görz, Gerd Graßhoff, James Hough, Manfred Laubich-
ler, Glenn Most, Pier Daniele Napolitani, Alessandro Nova, Hermann
Parzinger, Dan Potts, Circe Silva da Silva, Ana Simões, Richard Stephen-
son, Mark Stitt, Noel M. Swerdlow, Liba Taub, Martin Vingron, Scott
Walter, Norton Wise, Gerhard Wolf, Rüdiger Wolfrum, Gereon Wolters,
Zhang Baichun.
Sources 5
Edition Open Access
2011
The Role of Gravitation in
Physics
Report from the 1957 Chapel Hill
Conference
Cécile M. DeWitt and Dean Rickles (eds.)
Communicated by
Jürgen Renn, Alexander Blum and Peter Damerow
Edition Open Access
2011
Max Planck Research Library
for the History and Development of Knowledge
Sources 5
Communicated by Jürgen Renn, Alexander Blum and Peter Damerow
Copyedited by Beatrice Gabriel
Editors:
Cécile DeWitt-Morette
Jane and Roland Blumberg Centennial Professor Emerita
Department of Physics
University of Texas at Austin
Dean Rickles
Senior Research Fellow
Unit for History and Philosophy of Science
University of Sydney
ISBN 978-3-86931-963-6
First published 2011
Printed in Germany by epubli, Oranienstraße 183, 10999 Berlin
http://www.epubli.de
Edition Open Access
http://www.edition-open-access.de
Published under Creative Commons by-nc-sa 3.0 Germany Licence
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/de/
v
The Max Planck Research Library for the History and Development of
Knowledge comprises two subseries, Studies and Sources. They present
research results and the relevant sources in a new format, combining the
advantages of traditional publications and the digital medium. The vol-
umesareavailablebothasprintedbooksandasonlineopenaccesspublica-
tions. They present original scientific work submitted under the scholarly
responsibilityofmembersoftheScientificBoardandtheiracademicpeers.
The volumes of the two subseries and their electronic counterparts
are directed at scholars and students of various disciplines, as well as at a
broader public interested in how science shapes our world. They provide
rapid access to knowledge at low cost. Moreover, by combining print with
digital publication, the two series offer a new way of publishing research
in flux and of studying historical topics or current issues in relation to
primary materials that are otherwise not easily available.
The initiative is supported, for the time being, by research depart-
ments of three Max Planck Institutes, the MPI for the History of Science,
the Fritz Haber Institute of the MPG, and the MPI for Gravitational
Physics (Albert Einstein Institute). This is in line with the Berlin Dec-
laration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities,
launched by the Max Planck Society in 2003.
Each volume of the Studies series is dedicated to a key subject in
the history and development of knowledge, bringing together perspectives
from different fields and combining source-based empirical research with
theoretically guided approaches. The studies are typically working group
volumes presenting integrative approaches to problems ranging from the
globalization of knowledge to the nature of scientific innovation.
Each volume of the Sources series typically presents a primary source
– relevant for the history and development of knowledge – in facsimile,
transcription, or translation. The original sources are complemented by
an introduction and by commentaries reflecting original scholarly work.
The sources reproduced in this series may be rare books, manuscripts,
documentsordatathatarenotreadilyaccessibleinlibrariesandarchives.
On the basis of scholarly expertise the publication of the two series
bringstogethertraditionalbooksproducedbyprint-on-demandtechniques
with modern information technology. Based on and extending the func-
tionalities of the existing open access repository European Cultural Her-
itageOnline(ECHO),thisinitiativeaimsatamodelforanunprecedented,
web-basedscientificworkingenvironmentintegratingaccesstoinformation
with interactive features.

Contents
1 The Chapel Hill Conference in Context
Dean Rickles................................................ 7
2 The Authors............................................... 23
The Original Chapel Hill Report
Session I Unquantized General Relativity
Chairman: B. S. DeWitt
3 The Present Position of Classical Relativity Theory
and Some of its Problems
John Wheeler ............................................... 43
4 The Experimental Basis of Einstein’s Theory
R. H. Dicke................................................. 51
Session II Unquantized General Relativity, Continued
Chairman: P. G. Bergmann
5 On the Integration of the Einstein Equations
André Lichnerowicz.......................................... 65
5.1 The Space-Time Manifold................................... 65
5.2 The Cauchy Problem for the Gravitational Field............. 66
5.3 Local Solutions for the Exterior Case........................ 67
5.4 The Problem of the Initial Values............................ 68
5.5 The Cauchy Problem for the Asymmetric Theory............ 69
5.6 Global Solutions and Universes.............................. 70
5.7 Global Problems............................................. 70
6 Remarks on Global Solutions
C. W. Misner............................................... 77
viii Contents
7 SolvingTheInitialValueProblemUsingCartanCal-
culus
Y. Fourès................................................... 81
8 Some Remarks on Cosmological Models
R. W. Bass and L. Witten.................................. 89
Session III Unquantized General Relativity, Continued
Chairman: H. Bondi
9 Gravitational Waves
L. Marder, Presented by H. Bondi .......................... 97
9.1 Static Cylinder.............................................. 97
9.2 Periodic Waves.............................................. 98
9.3 Pulse Waves................................................. 99
10 Gravitational Field of an Axially Symmetric System
N. Rosen and H. Shamir, Presented by F. Pirani............ 107
11 The Dynamics of a Lattice Universe
R. W. Lindquist ............................................ 113
Session IV Invited Reports on Cosmology
Chairman: F. J. Belinfante
12 Measurable Quantities that May Enable Questions
of Cosmology to be Answered
Thomas Gold................................................ 121
12.1 Introduction................................................. 121
12.2 Measurements and Observations............................. 121
12.3 Cosmological Models........................................ 122
12.4 Observational Data.......................................... 122
13 RadioAstronomicalMeasurementsofInteresttoCos-
mology
A. E. Lilley................................................. 131
Session V Unquantized General Relativity, Concluded
Chairman: A. Lichnerowicz
14 Measurement of Classical Gravitation Fields
Felix Pirani ................................................. 141
Contents ix
15 Correspondence in the Generalized Theory of Grav-
itation
Behram Kursunoglu.......................................... 147
16 Presentation of Work by T. Taniuchi
Ryoyu Utiyama.............................................. 151
17 Negative Mass in General Relativity
Hermann Bondi............................................. 159
Session VI Quantized General Relativity
Chairman: J. A. Wheeler
18 The Problems of Quantizing the Gravitational Field
P. G. Bergmann............................................ 165
19 Conceptual Clock Models
H. Salecker.................................................. 171
20 The Three-Field Problem
F. J. Belinfante............................................. 187
Session VII Quantized General Relativity, Continued
Chairman: A. Schild
21 Quantum Gravidynamics
Bryce DeWitt ............................................... 197
Session VIII Quantized General Relativity, Concluded
Chairman: V. Bargmann
22 The Possibility of Gravitational Quantization......... 243
23 The Necessity of Gravitational Quantization.......... 247
Closing Session
Chairman: B. S. DeWitt
24 Divergences in Quantized General Relativity
S. Deser .................................................... 263
25 Critical Comments
R. P. Feynman............................................. 271
26 Summary of Conference
P. G. Bergmann............................................ 277
27 An Expanded Version of the Remarks by R.P. Feyn-
man on the Reality of Gravitational Waves............ 279

Index....................................................... 283