Despite its being one of Roger Penrose’s greatest contributions to spacetime physics, there is a dearth of philosophical literature on twistor theory. The one exception to this is Bain (2006)—but although excellent, there remains much to be said on the foundations and philosophy of twistor theory. In this article, we (a) present for philosophers an introduction to twistor theory, (b) consider how the spacetime–twistor correspondence interacts with the philosophical literature on theoretical equivalence, and (c) explore the bearing which twistor theory might have on philosophical issues such as the status of dynamics, the geometrisation of physics, spacetime ontology, the emergence of spacetime, and symmetry-to-reality inferences. We close with an elaboration of a variety of further opportunities for philosophical investigation into twistor theory.

尽管它是罗杰·彭罗斯 （Roger Penrose） 对时空物理学最伟大的贡献之一，但缺乏关于扭曲理论的哲学文献。唯一的例外是 Bain （2006）——但尽管非常出色，但关于 twistor 理论的基础和哲学仍有很多话要说。在本文中，我们 （a） 为哲学家介绍了 twistor 理论，（b） 考虑了时空-twistor 对应如何与理论等效性的哲学文献相互作用，以及 （c） 探讨twistor 理论对哲学问题的影响，例如动力学的状态、物理学的几何化、时空本体论、时空的出现， 以及对称到现实的推理。最后，我们详细阐述了对 twistor 理论进行哲学研究的各种进一步机会。