Why surplus structure is not superfluous

Nguyen, James ORCID: 0000-0002-6919-1365, Teh, Nicholas J. and Wells, Laura (2018) Why surplus structure is not superfluous. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. ISSN 0007-0882

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Abstract

The idea that gauge theory has `surplus' structure poses a puzzle: in one much discussed sense, this structure is redundant; but on the other hand, it is also widely held to play an essential role in the theory. In this paper, we employ category-theoretic tools to illuminate an aspect of this puzzle. We precisify what is meant by `surplus' structure by means of functorial comparisons with equivalence classes of gauge fields, and then show that such structure is essential for any theory that represents a rich collection of physically relevant fields which are `local' in nature.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	http://journal.philsci.org/
Additional Information:	© 2017 The Authors
Divisions:	Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > B Philosophy (General)
Date Deposited:	15 Dec 2017 14:19
Last Modified:	03 Jan 2025 00:22
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/86346

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