From empirical symmetries to laws

The goal of this paper is to argue for a systematic set of connections between the philosophy literature on the empirical significance of symmetries and the physics literature on generating effective field theories using symmetry-breaking data via the coset construction. A salient case for exhibiting these connections is the symmetry principles exhibited by Newton’s Corollaries V and VI. In the following, we (i) argue for an interpretation of symmetry-breaking in terms of subsystem-environment reasoning, and (ii) display a novel derivation of Newtonian gravitational dynamics from Newton’s Corollaries V and VI using this interpretation.

Effective field theory · Field (mathematics) · Gravitation · Homogeneous space · Interpretation (philosophy) · Newtonian fluid · Salient · Symmetry (geometry) · Philosophy and History of Science · Relativity and Gravitational Theory · Statistical Mechanics and Entropy