James L. Anderson

Physicist who formalized the "absolute objects" criterion (1967) for distinguishing the dynamical structures of a physical theory from its fixed, non-dynamical background structures — a technical proposal later read retrospectively as the earliest conceptual definition of background-independence in physics.

Not to be confused with John R. Anderson, an unrelated cognitive psychologist (ACT-R, rational analysis) with a separate hub elsewhere in this vault. Same surname, different person, different field, no connection found.

Matters to this vault as the ancestral anchor Vinck & De Haro's whole three-definitions comparison is built outward from: of the three standard philosophical definitions of background-independence their 2026 paper tests against Witten's claim for the CLPW algebra, Anderson's is the oldest and the one the other two (Pooley's variational-principle definition, Belot's degrees-of-freedom proposal) implicitly respond to.

References

• claim-vinck-de-haro-2026-no-existing-definition-captures-wittens-background-independence-claim — his absolute-object criterion is one of the three definitions found not to capture Witten's claim