Dear Eckard
You ask: Wasn't Michelson correct already in 1881 when he concluded that Maxwell's view is untenable who imagined a stationary aether relative to which the earth is moving?
No, Michelson was not correct because he never understood the outcome of the experiment. Maxwell was right in assuming the aether static but he was wrong in assuming that Galilean transformations applied. The point is that they never imagined that for an observer in motion relative to the absolute frame of reference (the aether, the vacuum or space itself as you wish to call understand it) clocks and material objects would undergo time dilation and length contraction, respectively.
You: Isn't the question rather irrelevant whether the vacuum constitute or contains something?
No, it is not irrelevant because depending on how we conceive the vacuum is how we'll model it in mathematical terms. If we think that space is a container the mathematical representation could be given in geometrical terms, if we think that space is a substance, we may model it as a fluid.
You: While spatio vacuo means empty space, it obviously contains electric, magnetic, and gravitation fields. In this respect I like the papers by Elitzur.
This is my point. Based on this sentence I see that you think that space is also an empty container that contains particles, electric, magnetic and gravitational fields; this is Einstein's view of space. He thought that fields and particles don't need a medium, that they can move in total empty space. Maxwell argued that fields were states of the aether and Einstein argued that fields didn't need a carrier. I disagree with Einstein's view. I hold that particles and fields are not independent objects of space but they are excitations and states of space, respectively; but conceiving space as a material substance not as a container. During the XIX century physicist thought that there was empty space which was in turn filled with the aether... I don't follow this dichotomy, aether and space are the same physical entity for me. Do you understand this?
You: Michelson's null result did merely show that there is no material carrier of electromagnetic waves. I do not see it disproving an absolute space which possibly may be understood as relations between matter located in it.
No, it doesn't show that there is no aether. Interferometric experiments do not prove that there is or there is not aether, this is what I discussed in my essay.
You: Is there "a bijection between the mathematical space and the physical or intuitive space"? ... However, the map - while something real too - is not the territory.
So, what is the territory? Could please let me know what is your conception of space then?
Regards
Israel
