Concretely, one should be asking if the laws of motion are isotropic in a given context. Experientially they are not, but the mechanical world view insists they are. Consider a pebble. It does not continue to move in straight line in the direction it is thrown, so to overide the experience that motion tends to be curvy and accelerative, we imagine gravity is a deflecting force or is warped space.
harry On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 9:47 AM, David Jonsson <[email protected]> wrote: > I was checking the derivation of the Lorentz transformation and it mentions > that it relies on space being "homogeneous" or on "isotropy of the space". > Why are these assumptions made? > > See > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_transformation#From_physical_principles > > And as far as I have read 1 or 2 or neither holds in the group method of > deriving > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_transformation#From_group_postulates > 1. does not hold since two Lorentz transformation correspond to one rotation > and one Lorentz transformation. > 2. does not hold since Lorentz transformations are not associative > > I think it is a shortcoming to make preassumptions. > > David > > David Jonsson, Sweden, phone callto:+46703000370 > >
