Nicholas Teh (University of Notre Dame), Laura Wells (University of Notre Dame), James Nguyen (University of Notre Dame)
In this paper we apply the results of "Why surplus structure is not superfluous" to analyze gauge symmetry in Newtonian gravity, as well as the striking spacetime functionalist claim (Knox 2013) that Newtonian gravity is best understood as a theory of curved spacetime, precisely because its Neo-Newtonian formulation contains a redundancy. In particular, we show that our previous analysis of how internal U(1) gauge symmetry can in fact play a representational role in a theory can be extended to the external U(1) symmetry of Newtonian gravity. We also argue that similar morals can be drawn concerning "locality" and "charges".
