The Untranslated Appendix to Reichenbach’s ‘The Philosophy of Space and Time’

In 1958 Hans Reichenbach’s second wife Maria Reichenbach and John Freund edited an English translation of the Philosophie der Raum-Zeit-Lehre . The Philosophy of space and time turned out to be one of the most influential books in the history of philosophy of physics. For those who never read the German original, it might come as a surprise that the English version is missing the translation of an Appendix entitled ‘Weyl’s Extension of Riemann’s Concept of Space and the Geometrical Interpretation of Electromagnetism.’ The Appendix covers around 50 pages of the German original, the Philosophie der Raum-Zeit-Lehre—not few considering that Reichenbach dedicated roughly 60 pages of the book to general relativity.

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Review of Jimena Canales. The physicist and the philosopher. Einstein, Bergson and the Debate that Changed our Understanding of Time

Jimena Canales is the Thomas M. Siebel Chair in the History of Science University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her first book, A tenth of a second (Canales, 2011), exploring the importance that precise time measurement had on modern science and society, has been widely reviewed and acclaimed. The present book grew up from the last chapter of her previous work. The Physicist and the Philosopher is the ambitious attempt to describe how the debate between Einstein and Bergson—an interplay of philosophical differences, political disagreement, and personal animosity—had a profound and far-reaching impact on our culture’s perception of “the nature of time, the role of philosophy, and the reach and power of science” (p. 8)

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