Abstract

MELOGNO, Pablo. [A Reappraisal of Poincaré’s Geometrical Conventionalism]. Diánoia [online]. 2018, vol.63, n.81, pp.37-59. ISSN 0185-2450.  https://doi.org/10.22201/iifs.18704913e.2018.81.1575.

Abstract: Janet Folina has proposed an interpretation of Poincaré’s conven-tionalism against Michael Friedman and Robert DiSalle. They both state that Poincaré’s proposal is refuted by general relativity, since it implies a restrictive notion of a priori principles. Folina claims that Poincaré’s conventionalism is not in conflict with general relativity because from Poincaré’s proposal it is possible to extract a relativized notion of a priori principles. I intend to show that Folina’s strategy is ineffective due to Poincaré’s inability to explain the role of Riemann manifold in general relativity. I conclude that the attempt to reconstruct the development of general relativity from Poincaré’s philosophy may be an obstacle to understanding the radical nature of the change that relativity brought to the relationship between physics and geometry.

Keywords : a priori; general relativity; Janet Folina; Michael Friedman; Robert DiSalle.