Remarks on the Notions of General Covariance and Background Independence

2006/03/22 by Domenico Giulini · 1 voice · 4 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #History and Developments in Astronomy #Relativity and Gravitational Theory #gr-qc

paper · pdf · doi:10.1007/978-3-540-71117-9_6

published as Lect.NotesPhys.721:105-120,2007 · 26 pages, 3 figures. Contribution to ``An assessment of current paradigms in the physics of fundamental interactions'', edited by I.O. Stamatescu (Springer Verlag, to appear)

arxiv created 2006/03/22 · openalex publication_date 2007/01/01 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

In the first part of this paper I review some of the difficulties that seem to obstruct generally valid definitions of "general covariance" and/or "background independence" The second and more historical part deals with a rather strange argument that Einstein put forward in his 1913 "Entwurf paper" with M. Grossmann to discredit scalar theories of gravity in order to promote general covariance.

Cited by

• Background-independence
• Cosmology of bigravity with doubly coupled matter
• Conceptual Aspects of Gauge/Gravity Duality
• General relativity [wikipedia]

Discussions

• Addressing the title, the controversies surrounding "general covariance" are quite a few (see references below). An important point of disagreement and confusion is, what exactly "general covariance" [stackexchange, 0 points]