Mach argued for a relational rather than an absolute notion of space,insisting that centrifugal forces inside a rotating object such as a bucket canbe reproduced by keeping the bucket fixed and rotating the universe. Inresponse to a paper of ours denying the validity of Mach's views, Bhadra andDas elaborate on Mach's position. We address several of their arguments andshow that Mach's relational notion of space is wrong-headed. Special andgeneral relativity distinguish between a bucket (i.e. any system) rotating in afixed universe and a bucket fixed in a rotating universe and between anon-rotating bucket in a non-rotating universe and a co-rotating bucket in arotating universe, distinctions that go against Mach's relational theory ofspace. Even when taken on its own terms, Mach's theory can apply only to singlepoint-like buckets rotating at infinitesimal angular velocities.
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