On the Meaning of Local Symmetries: Epistemic-Ontological Dialectics

TL;DR

This paper explores the philosophical and ontological implications of local symmetries in physics, emphasizing their role in understanding spacetime and relationality within gauge theories.

Contribution

It offers a novel account of local symmetries, linking epistemic principles with ontological insights about spacetime and relationality in gauge theories.

Findings

Local symmetries imply democratic epistemic access to physical laws.

General covariance and gauge principles reveal ontological aspects of spacetime.

Relationality is fundamental to gauge field theories in general relativity.

Abstract

We propose our account of the meaning of local symmetries. We argue that the general covariance principle and gauge principle both are principles of democratic epistemic access to the law of physics, leading to ontological insights about the objective nature of spacetime. We further argue that relationality is a core notion of general-relativistic gauge field theory, tacitly encoded by its (active) local symmetries.