On Absolute Units
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Authors
Publication Date
2021-05-11Journal Title
The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science
ISSN
0007-0882
Publisher
University of Chicago Press
Number
715236
Type
Article
This Version
AM
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Dewar, N. (2021). On Absolute Units. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, (715236) https://doi.org/10.1086/715236
Abstract
How may we characterise the intrinsic structure of physical quantities such as mass, length, or electric charge? This paper shows that group-theoretic methods—specifically, the notion of a free and transitive group action—provide an elegant way of characterising the structure of scalar quantities, and uses this to give an intrinsic treatment of vector quantities. It also gives a general account of how different scalar or vector quantities may be algebraically combined with one another. Finally, it uses this apparatus to give a simple intrinsic treatment of Newtonian gravitation.
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/715236
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/335304
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International
Licence URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
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