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arXiv · 0804.2947

How Weyl stumbled across electricity while pursuing mathematical justice

Alexander Afriat
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Abstract

It is argued that Weyl's theory of gravitation and electricity came out of `mathematical justice': out of the equal rights direction and length. Such mathematical justice was manifestly at work in the context of discovery, and is enough (together with a couple of simple and natural operations) to derive all of source-free electromagnetism. Weyl's repeated references to coordinates and gauge are taken to express equal treatment of direction and length.

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Alexander Afriat. 2008-04-18. How Weyl stumbled across electricity while pursuing mathematical justice. https://arxiv.org/abs/0804.2947

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