Preface vi

1 What is Spatiotemporal Locality? 1

1 The Big Picture 1

2 Causal Relations between Events 3

3 Action by Contact 7

4 Spatial, Temporal, and Spatiotemporal Locality Defined 13

5 Intrinsic Properties and Noncausal Connections 17

Discussion Questions 23

Notes 24

2 Fields to the Rescue? 26

1 The Electric Force 26

2 The Electric Field and its Possible Interpretations 32

3 Potentials 42

4 Lines of Force 47

Discussion Questions 61

Notes 65

3 Dispositions and Causes 67

1 Introduction 67

2 Dispositions, Categorical Bases, and Subjunctive Conditionals 71

3 Are the Categorical Bases in Themselves Unknowable? 79

Discussion Questions 90

Notes 92

4 Locality and Scientific Explanation 94

1 Is Action at a Distance Impossible? 94

2 Brute Facts and Ultimate Explanations 95

3 Which Facts are Brute? 100

Discussion Questions 107

Notes 110

5 Fields, Energy, and Momentum 111

1 Introduction 111

2 The Argument from Conserved Quantities 112

3 Why Energy's Ontological Status Matters 120

4 Energy in Classical Physics 125

5 Energy in the Fields 131

6 Energy Flow and the Poynting Vector 136

7 A Moral Regarding the Testability of Theories 153

Discussion Questions 157

Notes 162

6 Is there Nothing but Fields? 165

1 Is Electric Charge Real? 165

2 Faraday's Picture 167

Discussion Questions 171

Notes 173

7 Relativity and the Unification of Electricity and Magnetism 175

1 Unification in Physics 175

2 How Relativity Unifies Electricity and Magnetism 180

3 Einstein's Argument from Asymmetry 186

4 The Interdependence of Philosophy and Physics 199

Discussion Questions 201

Notes 203

8 Relativity, Energy, Mass, and the Reality of Fields 205

1 Classical Physics and the "Relativity of Motion" 206

2 Relativistic Invariants and the Unification that Relativity Achieves: Space and Time 210

3 Relativistic Invariants and the Unification that Relativity Achieves: Energy and Momentum 221

4 Mass and the Meaning of "e = mc2 " 224

5 Fields - At Last! 240

6 Erasing the Line between Scientific Theory and its Philosophical Interpretation 249

Discussion Questions 250

Notes 252

9 Quantum Metaphysics 255

1 Is Quantum Mechanics Complete? 255

2 The Bell Inequalities 263

3 For Whom the Bell Tolls 271

4 Wrestling with Nonlocality 280

Discussion Questions 298

Notes 300

Final Exam 302

References 305

Index 316