A group of philosophers nicknamed the “three Johns” revived this physicist’s “hole argument” to oppose the idea that space exists absolutely. For 10 points each:
[10e] Name this physicist whose 1905 papers use thought experiments about trains to illustrate concepts like “time dilation.”
ANSWER: Albert Einstein
[10m] Per the “hole argument,” viewing space as a substance violates this assumption of general relativity. This philosophical position broadly holds that all events are necessitated by prior causes.
ANSWER: determinism
[10h] The “three Johns” named an “equivalence” after this 18th-century thinker since he used the “identity of indiscernibles” to argue for a relational theory of space in letters to Samuel Clarke.
ANSWER: Gottfried Leibniz [or Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz]
<Jordan Brownstein, RMP - Philosophy> ~20133~ <Editor: Jordan Brownstein>