On the Failure of Weyl's 1918 Theory (original) (raw)

In 1918 the German mathematician Hermann Weyl developed a non-Riemannian geometry in which electromagnetism appeared to emerge naturally as a consequence of the non-invariance of vector magnitude. Although an initial admirer of the theory, Einstein declared the theory unphysical on the basis of the non-invariance of the line element ds, which is arbitrarily rescaled from point to point in the geometry. We examine the Weyl theory and trace its failure to its inability to accommodate certain vectors that are inherently scale invariant. A revision of the theory is suggested that appears to refute Einstein's objection.