Ebook: Revisiting the Foundations of Relativistic Physics: Festschrift in Honor of John Stachel

2) the globalization of capital has far outstripped the ability of current labor movements, organized at best on a national level, to conduct an effective defense of the interests of labor within capitalism, let alone to seriously challenge the cap­ italist system. To develop some form-or forms--of international organization of labor, long an ideological challenge ("Workers of the World Unite") has now become an urgent matter of survival for the labor movements of the world. Here is a challenge, on which I think broad agreement is possible: Even those who think capitalism is capable of indefinite survival must agree that it has functioned best in the past-for example, during the long period of post-World War II expansion­ when the power of capital has been effectively limited by the countervailing power of labor. Effective exercise of that power has always depended on overcoming the seg­ mentation of labor due to such factors as locality, race, gender, occupation, etc. , which stilIremain important. Above, I have singled out the two factors that today seem key to me: the split between mental and manual labor, and segmentation by nationality. Let all concerned about the current state of capitalism work to build up the countervailing power of labor, and let time show whether this results in nothing more than the better functioning of capitalism, or whether a new challenge to the system ultimately emerges.

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Content:
Front Matter....Pages i-xxii
Front Matter....Pages 1-1
The Prehistory of Relativity....Pages 3-12
Interpretations and Equations of the Michelson Experiment and its Variations....Pages 13-25
The N-Stein Family....Pages 27-54
Eclipses of the Stars....Pages 55-67
The Varieties of Unity: Sounding Unified Theories 1920–1930....Pages 69-92
Indiscernibles, General Covariance, and Other Symmetries: The Case for Non-Reductive Relationalism....Pages 93-149
On Relative Orbital Rotation in Relativity Theory....Pages 151-173
Front Matter....Pages 175-190
The unique nature of cosmology....Pages 191-191
Time, Structure and Evolution in Cosmology....Pages 193-220
Timekeeping in an Expanding Universe....Pages 221-274
Gravitational Lensing from a Space-Time Perspective....Pages 275-280
Rigidly Rotating Disk Revisited....Pages 281-304
DSS 2+2....Pages 305-316
Geometry, Null Hypersurfaces and New Variables....Pages 317-347
On Vacuum Twisting Type-N Again....Pages 349-360
Quasi-Local Energy....Pages 361-373
Space-Time Defects: Open and Closed Shells Revisited....Pages 375-382
Dimensionally Challenged Gravities....Pages 383-395
A Note on Holonomic Constraints....Pages 397-401
Front Matter....Pages 403-419
Towards an Action-at-a-Distance Concept of Spacetime....Pages 191-191
Front Matter....Pages 421-436
Inevitability, Inseparability and Gedanken Measurement....Pages 437-437
The Concept of Quantum State: New Views on old Phenomena....Pages 439-450
Elementary Processes....Pages 451-478
On Quantum Non-Locality, Special Relativity, And Counterfactual Reasoning....Pages 479-497
Coherence, Entanglement, and Reductionist Explanation In Quantum Physics....Pages 499-521
Front Matter....Pages 523-542
Physics and Science Fiction....Pages 543-543
Can We Learn from History? Do We Want To?....Pages 545-554
Patterns of Appropriation in the Greek Intellectual Life of the 18th Century....Pages 555-568
Darwin, Marx, and Warranted Progress....Pages 569-591
Albert Einstein and the Founding of Brandeis University....Pages 593-613
Back Matter....Pages 615-640
....Pages 641-649