Abstract
John Stachel and action at a distance? Direct connection or not as there may be between these two themes, physics, with its ever-growing reach, provides one. Vivid in the memory of one of us (JAW) is the seminar in which Richard Feynman reported his work with JAW, defending the 1922 argument of Tetrode that “The sun would not radiate if it were alone in space an no other bodies could absorb its radiation... ” Einstein, Pauli, and Wigner are among those who attended the seminar, but no one expected any of them to try a similar replacement of Einstein’s field theory of gravitation by a Newtonian direct action account. Did Einstein himself, who had given us the standard field theory of gravity in place of Newtonian direct action, ever attempt the reverse: to sweep out the space-time continuum and replace it by pure direct coupling between particle and particle? That is a question of the history of science, of Einstein thoughts and Einstein records. For an answer to that question, we will look to John Stachel, immersed as he is in the Einstein Papers, and working with them day after day. Who does not rejoice in that life work of Stachel’s, witnessed not least on the fly leaf of The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein.1
In honour of Professor Stachel. He will agree with me on points, if not substance, but I am indebted to him for his guidance on both topics; and on many others besides.
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Wesley, D.H., Wheeler, J.A. (2003). Towards an Action-at-a-Distance Concept of Spacetime. In: Renn, J., et al. Revisiting the Foundations of Relativistic Physics. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0111-3_21
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