Monthly Archives: January 2020

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.

Continue reading