UC San Diego

This dissertation examines philosophical problems in general relativity and historical questions about the production of physical knowledge. Part I focuses on three foundational problems in general relativity. Chapter 1 revisits the metaphysics of spacetime through Mach’s principle and the vacuum challenge, arguing that the existence of gravitational degrees of freedom not fixed by the stress–energy tensor need not straightforwardly support substantivalism. Chapter 2 distinguishes energy conservation from energy balance in general relativity, arguing that even skeptics about gravitational energy should retain balance relations as physically indispensable constraints against gravitational perpetual motion machines. Chapter 3 argues that general relativity often achieves empirical success not through a single unified model applied uniformly, but through a plurality of approximation schemes, boundary conditions, and matching procedures adapted to different regimes. Part II turns to the history and philosophy of twentieth-century physics through an intellectual biography of Chien-Shiung Wu. It situates Wu’s work on parity violation within the broader histories of war, migration, racial exclusion, gender hierarchy, Cold War politics, and institutional reform. Taken together, the chapters show how our understanding of physical theories depends on their formal structure, their use in concrete modeling practices, and the historical and institutional conditions under which scientific knowledge is produced. 本论文考察广义相对论中的哲学问题，以及有关物理知识生产的历史问题。第一部分聚焦广义相对论中的三个基础性问题。第一章通过马赫原理与真空解问题重审时空形而上学，并论证指出：不由能动量张量所固定的引力自由度，并不必然直接支持时空实体论。第二章区分广义相对论中的能量守恒与能量平衡，主张即便对引力能量持怀疑态度，也仍应保留能量平衡关系，因为它们构成排除“引力永动机”的、物理上不可或缺的约束。第三章主张，广义相对论的经验成功依赖于多种适用于不同物理区域的近似方法与边界条件；本章并从历史角度讨论后牛顿近似与弱场近似之间的拼接方式。第二部分通过考察吴健雄的学术生平，转向二十世纪物理学史与物理哲学的交汇问题。本部分将吴健雄关于宇称不守恒的研究工作，置于战争、迁徙、种族排斥、性别等级、冷战政治以及制度改革等历史背景之中加以审视。本文各章共同表明：我们对物理学理论的理解，既取决于理论本身的形式结构，也取决于其在具体物理建模实践中的应用方式，以及科学知识得以形成的历史语境与制度环境。