Mogens True Wegener
Mogens True Wegener | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1936 |
| Residence | Aarhus, Denmark |
| Nationality | Danish |
| Alma mater | University of Oslo |
| Known for | Cosmic time, Absolute simultaneity, Kinematic relativity, Philosophy of cosmology |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Philosophy of science, Cosmology, Temporal logic |
| Institutions | Aarhus University |
Mogens True Wegener (born 1936) is a Danish philosopher of science who spent his career at Aarhus University and who has argued, across more than half a century, that cosmic time and absolute simultaneity are defensible — and indeed necessary — despite special relativity's denial of them.
His route to that conclusion distinguishes him among the critics documented on this wiki. Where most argue from experiment — Michelson–Morley, Sagnac, GPS — Wegener argues from the philosophy of science and the axiomatic structure of the theories themselves, and from a particular tradition in British cosmology: the work of E. A. Milne, Hermann Bondi and Arthur Eddington, whose approaches he has spent his career trying to synthesise.
Education and career
Wegener completed his thesis, written in Danish, at the University of Oslo in 1966, under the title On Relativity and Simultaneity, and the possible synthesis of the cosmological theories of Milne, Bondi and Eddington. The programme announced in that title has occupied him ever since.
From 1967 to 2003 he was assistant and subsequently associate professor of philosophy of science at the Institute for the History of Ideas, Aarhus University, Denmark, retiring after some thirty-six years. His stated interests span temporal logic, relativistic physics, the relation between classical metaphysics and modern cosmology, and the interplay between Christian faith and freedom of thought.
Cosmic time and absolute simultaneity
Wegener's central contention is that a universal cosmic time — a single temporal order for the universe as a whole, and with it a meaningful notion of simultaneity between distant events — is not merely compatible with the evidence but required to make cosmology intelligible.
The difficulty is well known: special relativity's relativity of simultaneity denies exactly this, holding that whether two distant events are simultaneous depends on the observer. Yet cosmology in practice proceeds as though a cosmic time exists — the age of the universe, the sequence of cosmic epochs, and the cosmological models themselves are all stated in terms of a preferred time coordinate. Wegener's argument is that this is not a convenient fiction but a commitment cosmology cannot do without, and that the tension should be resolved in favour of cosmic time rather than papered over.
In The Idea of a Cosmic Time (2004) he sets out the case by way of Milne's kinematic relativity and the various axiomatisations of relativity that have been offered, proposing alternatives to the axioms distinctive of special relativity in order to open the way to a theory founded instead on proper time. The method is characteristic: rather than attacking relativity's empirical adequacy, he examines which of its axioms are doing the contested work and asks what follows if a different set is adopted.
Milne, Bondi and Eddington
The British cosmological tradition of the mid-twentieth century is Wegener's principal resource. E. A. Milne constructed a kinematic relativity founded on time and the exchange of light signals rather than on a spacetime metric, and made cosmic time central. Hermann Bondi was a founder of the steady-state cosmology and a careful analyst of relativity's assumptions. Arthur Eddington pursued a fundamental-theory programme seeking to derive the constants of nature from first principles.
Wegener's papers Milne's Kinematic Relativity (2000) and Some Cosmological Models (2002) develop this material, and "Big Bang" or "Steady State"? (2007) revisits the great cosmological dispute in which Bondi was a protagonist — a question this wiki treats at Big Bang and Non-standard cosmology.
Non-standard relativity
Wegener's mature statement is the book Non Standard Relativity: A Philosopher's Handbook of Heresies in Physics (2012), whose subtitle indicates both its content and its author's attitude to it. Earlier he edited the two volumes of Recent Advances in Relativity Theory — Volume 1: Formal Interpretations (2000) and Volume 2: Material Interpretations (2002) — a division that reflects his own distinction between relativity as a mathematical formalism and relativity as a claim about what physically exists.
The distinction matters to his argument. A formal interpretation can be internally consistent while remaining silent about what is real; a material interpretation commits itself. Wegener's contention, developed in Relativities At Variance (1998) and A Classical Alternative to STR (1995), is that the standard theory has been allowed to trade on the security of the former while making the claims of the latter.
Philosophy and method
Wegener's approach is that of a constructivist about scientific knowledge — see Constructivism in Science (1994) — holding that theories are built rather than read off nature, and that the axioms chosen at the outset determine much of what can subsequently be said. His work in temporal logic underpins the treatment of tense and time that runs through the cosmological papers, and his later Fundamental Queries (2012) and New Axioms for Cosmology (2011) return to the question of what a cosmology must assume before it can begin.
Related work on this wiki
Wegener arrives by philosophical argument at a position several other researchers here reach by other routes: that relativity's denial of absolute simultaneity should be resisted, and that a preferred frame or universal time is defensible. Compare the neo-Lorentzian tradition discussed at Relativity, including Franco Selleri, Joseph Levy and Simon J Prokhovnik; the logical critique of Herbert Dingle; and the observation that John Stewart Bell himself was prepared to accept a preferred frame to accommodate quantum non-locality.
Further material is indexed under Category:Philosophy of Science and Category:Relativity.
Abstracts
- 2012 - "Fundamental Queries" (Read in full)
- 2011 - "New Axioms for Cosmology" (Read in full)
- 2007 - ""Big Bang" or "Steady State"?" (Read in full)
- 2004 - "The Idea of a Cosmic Time" (Read in full)
- 2002 - "Some Cosmological Models" (Read in full)
- 2000 - "Milne's Kinematic Relativity" (Read in full)
- 1998 - "Relativities At Variance" (Read in full)
- 1995 - "A Classical Alternative to STR"
- 1994 - "Constructivism in Science" (Read in full)
Books
- 2012 - "Non Standard Relativity: A Philosopher's Handbook of Heresies in Physics"
- 2002 - "Recent Advances in Relativity Theory, Vol. 2: Material Interpretations" (editor)
- 2000 - "Recent Advances in Relativity Theory, Vol. 1: Formal Interpretations" (editor)