Field equations or conservation laws?

Abstract

We explicate some epistemological implications of stationary principles and in particular of Noether Theorems. Noether's contribution to the problem of covariance, in fact, is epistemologically relevant, since it moves the attention from equations to conservation laws.

6 pages, misprints corrected, reference list updated, MSC added; presented at the XXXII Int. Congress of the Italian Society of Historians of Physics and Astronomy (SISFA), Rome 2012

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Cohomological obstructions in locally variational field theories
• Noether Theorems and Reality of Motion