General relativity, geometrodynamics and ontology

pp. 728-803

in: Adolf Grünbaum, Philosophical problems of space and time, Berlin, Springer, 1973

Abstract

… Is space-time only an arena within which fields and particles move about as ‘physical’ and ‘foreign’ entities? Or is the four-dimensional continuum all there is? Is curved empty geometry a kind of magic building material out of which everything in the physical world is made: (1) slow curvature in one region of space describes a gravitational field; (2) a rippled geometry with a different type of curvature somewhere else describes an electromagnetic field; (3) a knotted-up region of high curvature describes a concentration of charge and mass-energy that moves like a particle? Are fields and particles foreign entities immersed in geometry, or are they nothing but geometry?