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http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001661/
MINKOWSKI SPACE-TIME: A GLORIOUS NON-ENTITY
Harvey Brown and Oliver Pooley
"It is argued that Minkowski space-time cannot serve as the deep
structure within a "constructive" version of the special theory of
relativity, contrary to widespread opinion in the philosophical
community."

http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=6603
"Harvey Brown thinks that most philosophers are confused about
relativity. Most centrally, he thinks they're confused about the
relativistic effects of length contraction and time
dilation.....According to (what Brown alleges is) the dominant view
among substantivalists, the geometrical structure of Minkowski
spacetime plays some role in explaining why moving rods shrink and why
moving clocks run slow. Brown rejects this view. He asserts, instead,
that in order to explain why moving rods shrink we must appeal to the
dynamical laws governing the forces that hold the parts of the rod
together. The geometry of Minkowski spacetime plays no role in this
explanation.....He thinks that good answers to these questions say
something about the way in which the forces holding the parts of the
rod together depend on velocity of the rod. Only that is a story of
what causes the particles to get closer together, and so what causes
the rod to shrink."

http://www.routledge-philosophy.com/books/Einstein-Relativity-and-Absolute-Simultaneity-isbn9780415701747
"Einstein, Relativity and Absolute Simultaneity is an anthology of
original essays by an international team of leading philosophers and
physicists who have come together to reassess the contemporary
paradigm of the relativistic concept of time. A great deal has changed
since 1905 when Einstein proposed his Special Theory of Relativity,
and this book offers a fresh reassessment of Special Relativity's
relativistic concept of time in terms of epistemology, metaphysics,
and physics."

http://philosophy.ucsd.edu/faculty/ccallender/
"On Finding 'Real' Time in Quantum Mechanics" (draft) Absolute
Simultaneity. (Eds) W.L. Craig and Q. Smith. NY: OxfordUniversity
Press, 2007.
Craig Callender: "In my opinion, by far the best way for the tenser to
respond to Putnam et al is to adopt the Lorentz 1915 interpretation of
time dilation and Fitzgerald contraction.1 Lorentz attributed these
effects (and hence the famous null results regarding an aether) to the
Lorentz invariance of the dynamical laws governing matter and
radiation, not to spacetime structure. On this view, Lorentz
invariance is not a spacetime symmetry but a dynamical symmetry, and
the special relativistic effects of dilation and contraction are not
purely kinematical. The background spacetime is Newtonian or neo-
Newtonian, not Minkowskian. Both Newtonian and neo-Newtonian spacetime
include a global absolute simultaneity among their invariant
structures (with Newtonian spacetime singling out one of neo-Newtonian
spacetime's many preferred inertial frames as the rest frame). On this
picture, there is no relativity of simultaneity and spacetime is
uniquely decomposable into space and time."

http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/pdf/files/975547d7-2d00-433a-b7e3-4a09145525ca.pdf
John Stachel: "It is not so well known that there was "another
Einstein," who from 1916 on was skeptical about the continuum as a
foundational element in physics..." Albert Einstein: "I consider it
entirely possible that physics cannot be based upon the field concept,
that is on continuous structures. Then nothing will remain of my whole
castle in the air, including the theory of gravitation, but also
nothing of the rest of contemporary physics."

http://ustl1.univ-lille1.fr/culture/publication/lna/detail/lna40/pgs/4_5.pdf
Jean Eisenstaedt: "Il n'y a alors aucune raison theorique a ce que la
vitesse de la lumiere ne depende pas de la vitesse de sa source ainsi
que de celle de l'observateur terrestre ; plus clairement encore, il
n'y a pas de raison, dans le cadre de la logique des Principia de
Newton, pour que la lumiere se comporte autrement - quant a sa
trajectoire - qu'une particule materielle. Il n'y a pas non plus de
raison pour que la lumiere ne soit pas sensible a la gravitation.
Bref, pourquoi ne pas appliquer a la lumiere toute la theorie
newtonienne ? C'est en fait ce que font plusieurs astronomes,
opticiens, philosophes de la nature a la fin du XVIIIeme siecle. Les
resultats sont etonnants... et aujourd'hui nouveaux."

Translation from French: "Therefore there is no theoretical reason why
the speed of light should not depend on the speed of the source and
the speed of the terrestrial observer as well; even more clearly,
there is no reason, in the framework of the logic of Newton's
Principia, why light should behave, as far as its trajectory is
concerned, differently from a material particle. Neither is there any
reason why light should not be sensible to gravitation. Briefly, why
don't we apply the whole Newtonian theory to light? In fact, that is
what many astronomers, opticians, philosophers of nature did by the
end of 18th century. The results are surprising....and new nowadays."

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com