This book seeks to work out which commitments are minimally sufficient to obtain an ontology of the natural world that matches all of today's well-established physical theories. We propose an ontology of the natural world that is defined only by two axioms: (1) There are distance relations that individuate simple objects, namely matter points. (2) The matter points are permanent, with the distances between them changing. Everything else comes in as a means to represent the change in the distance relations in a manner that is both as simple and as informative as possible. The book works this minimalist ontology out in philosophical as well as mathematical terms and shows how one can understand classical mechanics, quantum field theory and relativistic physics on the basis of this ontology. Along the way, we seek to achieve four subsidiary aims: (a) to make a case for a holistic individuation of the basic objects (ontic structural realism); (b) to work out a new version of Humeanism, dubbed Super-Humeanism, that does without natural properties; (c) to set out an ontology of quantum physics that is an alternative to quantum state realism and that avoids any ontological dualism of particles and fields; (d) to vindicate a relationalist ontology based on point objects also in the domain of relativistic physics.

This book seeks to work out which commitments are minimally sufficient to obtain an ontology of the natural world that matches all of today's well-established physical theories. We propose an ontology of the natural world that is defined only by two axioms: (1) There are distance relations that individuate simple objects, namely matter points. (2) The matter points are permanent, with the distances between them changing. Everything else comes in as a means to represent the change in the distance relations in a manner that is both as simple and as informative as possible. The book works this minimalist ontology out in philosophical as well as mathematical terms and shows how one can understand classical mechanics, quantum field theory and relativistic physics on the basis of this ontology. Along the way, we seek to achieve four subsidiary aims: (a) to make a case for a holistic individuation of the basic objects (ontic structural realism); (b) to work out a new version of Humeanism, dubbed Super-Humeanism, that does without natural properties; (c) to set out an ontology of quantum physics that is an alternative to quantum state realism and that avoids any ontological dualism of particles and fields; (d) to vindicate a relationalist ontology based on point objects also in the domain of relativistic physics.

Im Jahr 1937 erschienen die ersten Lehrbucher des damals noch sehr jungen Fachgebiets der Quantenchemie, beide geschrieben von Hans Hellmann (1903-1938). Im Gegensatz zu anderen fruhen Werken zu diesem und nah verwandten Fachgebieten, wie den Buchern von Pauling & Wilson (1935) oder von Eyring, Walter & Kimball (1944), wurden Hellmanns Lehrbucher spater weder nachgedruckt noch neu aufgelegt. Beachtet man seine bedeutenden wissenschaftlichen Leistungen - erwahnt seien hier die Aufklarung der Natur der kovalenten chemischen Bindung (1933), das molekulare Virialtheorem (1933), das quantenmechanische Krafttheorem (1933, 1936/1937, heute als Hellmann-Feynman-Theorem bekannt), die Pseudopotentialmethode (1934) und die spater von Born und Huang erneut und weiter bearbeitete Theorie der diabatischen und adiabatischen Elementarreaktionen (1935) -, so kann dieser Sachverhalt nur unzureichend durch Hellmanns tragisches Schicksal erklart werden. Eine Neuauflage der deutschen Fassung von Hellmanns Lehrbuch ist daher mehr als wunschenswert.