GPS Observables in Newtonian Spacetime or Why We Do Not Need 'Physical' Coordinate Systems

Abstract

Some authors have defended the claim that one needs to be able to define 'physical coordinate systems' and 'observables' in order to make sense of general relativity. Moreover, in Rovelli (Physical Review D, 65(4), 044017 2002), Rovelli proposes a way of implementing these ideas by making use of a system of satellites that allows defining a set of 'physical coordinates', the GPS coordinates. In this article I oppose these views in four ways. First, I defend an alternative way of understanding general relativity which implies that we have a perfectly fine interpretation of the models of the theory even in the absence of 'physical coordinate systems'. Second, I analyze and challenge the motivations behind the 'observable' view. Third, I analyze Rovelli's proposal and I conclude that it does not allow extracting any physical information from our models that wasn't available before. Fourth, I draw an analogy between general relativistic spacetimes and Newtonian spacetimes, which allows me to argue that as 'physical observables' are not needed in Newtonian spacetime, then neither are they in general relativity. In this sense, I conclude that the 'observable' view of general relativity is unmotivated.

References in corpus (3)

• Equivalent Theories Redefine Hamiltonian Observables to Exhibit Change in General Relativity
• Reassessing the problem of time of quantum gravity
• Torsion in the Classical Spacetime Context

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Against Radical Relationalism: in Defense of the Ordinal Structure of Time
• Does Quantum Cosmology Predict the Age of the Universe?
• The Dynamics of Quantum Gravity: the Missing Piece in the Spacetime Emergentist Account
• Diffeomorphism-Invariant Quantities in Phase Space: More than Correlations
• The Limitations of the Notion of `Observable' in Diffeomorphism-Invariant Models