Dear all, You are hereby invited to the next "Physics meets Philosophy" talk by Samuel C. Fletcher (University of Oxford) Title: Spare the Rod: Relativity as Pure Chronometry (see abstract below) Date: March 28th (Friday) Time: 11:00-12:30 Location: IQOQI Seminar room (Boltzmanngasse 3, 2nd floor) Zoom link (for those that cannot join in person): https://univienna.zoom.us/j/62116122970?pwd=lStKbUlbkGbPghncW9Dj3RW8tUmuAG.1 Abstract: At the dawn of general relativity's golden age in the 1950s, Irish mathematician and physicist John Synge proposed to reduce spatial concepts to temporal concepts. Synge argued that the structure of the spacetime metric allows one to define length in terms of time, a reduction of chronogeometry to what he calls pure chronometry. Synge's arresting proposal nevertheless has two problems. First, he retains an inadequate operationalist definition of durations in terms of "standard clocks." Second, his technical argument only defines infinitesimal length in terms of infinitesimal durations. In light of these criticisms, I defend a more moderate version of Synge's thesis and sketch a mathematical argument to establish it. For more information on "Physics meets Philosophy", see https://sites.google.com/view/physphilvienna Best wishes Sebastian