Re: Poincare and Einstein on Relativity


"harry" <harald.vanlintelButNotThis@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
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With some rearranging:

"Pmb" <someone@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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"harry" <harald.vanlintelButNotThis@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
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[...]
Anyway, that paper does have useful references and key words that
lead to the searched web links; and also in those references there
appear to be quite some errors. It's too much to give an overview of
all suspected errors in all those papers. However, the following do
contain a wealth of valuable citations:

http://dbserv.ihep.su/~pubs/tconf05/ps/c5-1.pdf (Marschal).

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/physics/pdf/0408/0408077v4.pdf (Logunov;
this is a book!)

See also (referenced in his book), in his gravitation theory book:
http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0210005
As a nice surprise, completely at the end (p.241) it contains an
English translation of Poincare's 1905 note!

Happy reading. :-)
[...]

I have not read it, but from the title it appears that the information
of Whittaker was not aimed at dealing with your topic, so I would not
expect much useful from it. It may be interesting to hear in what way
you think that Whittaker was "pretty off".

The title of the relevant chapter is "Relativity Theory of Poincare and
Lorentz"! All he contributes to Einstein on SR is as follows
--------------------------------------------------------------------
In the autumn of the same year, in the same volume of the Annalen der
Physik as his paper on Brownian motion, Einstein published a paper which
set forth the relativity theory of Poincare and Lorentz with some
amplification. He asserted as a fundamental principle the 'constancy of
the velocity of light', i.e. that the velocity of light in vacuo is the
same in all systems of reference which are moving relatively to each
other: an assertion which at the same time was widely accepted, but has
been severly criticised by later writers. In this paper Einstein gave the
modifications which must by now be introduced into the formulae for the
consideration of the Doppler effect.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
That's all he says about Einstein.

I do not remember to have seen a citation of Whittaker in which he gave
all the credit of SRT to Poincare.

Then its a good thing I started this thread! :)

For example, did he claim that Poincare derived SRT directly from the
PoR? That would be surprising indeed.

Most likely, Whittaker simply didn't attach much importance to the
derivation of the LT directly from the PoR, without messing around as
Lorentz did. That's a matter of taste of course. Lorentz found it not
essential but a strong improvement nevertheless.

I haven't read that chapter yet and have said I'll remain silent on
Whittaker and the other authors I'm reading. I made a small exception
above but don't wish to over do it. I'm refraining from it because I
don't want to post something which I'll later regret posting due to
acting to hastily. However if you'd like to read the chapter in Whittaker
I can provide that material to you.

By now you made me curious! As it is in our library, I plan to have a look
at it today. :-)

There ya go! :) It'd be nice to have someone else read it to in case I miss
something.

I do recall that Einstein gave some credit to Poincare though. In
Einstein's paper "The Principle of Conservation of Motion of the Center
of Gravity and the Inertia of Energy," in Annalen der Physik 20 (1906),
pgs 622-633. On the first page Einstein wrote
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Although the simple formal considerations that have been carried out to
prove this statement are in the main already contained in a work by H.
Poincare, for the sake of clarity I shall not base myself on that work.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
The lists an article of Poincare's from 1900.

Yes, that's what I referred to when I remarked that it could not make up
for the lack of accredition in Einstein's much more important paper of
1905. As the conspiracy theory people assess, there is not much lack of
accredition *except* for Poincare on relativity.

In contrast, the books and papers above DO provide the necessary
information (many pertinent citations) which enable anyone to form an
opinion about the topic you raised; and as usual, being well informed
requires quite a lot of study. A few years ago I spent months on that
topic before I got a clear picture of it.

I don't intend to become an expert at this.

OK.

I intend, for right now at least, to study the material I have in my
possesion at this time.

The material here above with many citations of Poincare as well as his
1905 paper is now also in your posession! (OK then, almost: just one
mouse-click away).

I did have a friend get me those Am. J. Phys. articles about Poincare and
relativity. I'll take as much time as I want to learn this material very
well though.

The paper by Holton is hard to read. Very philosophical in the first
part, while the second part which covers Whittaker's book on the matter.
I plan on reading the AJP articles several times though.

My advice: focus on the presented evidence in both pro-and contra
articles - do I need to remind you of articles about relativistic mass?
:))

Have a little faith in me my friend! :) I'm no slouch. I intend of finding
the sequence of events, what they meant and whether it was the same idea as
Einstein had in mind. No doubt people could read the same materal and come
to an opposite conclusion regardless of what opinion I form.

Pete

Pete


.

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