Abstract

The role of the concept of invariance in physics and geometry is analyzed, with attention to the closely connected concepts of symmetry and objective meaning. The question of why the fundamental equations of physical theories are not invariant, but only covariant, is examined in some detail. The last part of the paper focuses on the surprising example of entropy as a complete invariant in ergodic theory for any two ergodic processes that are isomorphic in the measure-theoretic sense