Re: History of relativity

Juan R. González-Álvarez wrote:
The section on history of relativity has been updated
http://www.canonicalscience.org/en/researchzone/history.html

That website displays the bias of its author much more strongly than than any defensible view of the history of science. It is revisionist history at its worst, as it does not consider the evolution of ideas, which at base are a major driving force of history, ESPECIALLY in science. In particular, it fails to mention that Einstein was the originator of the central idea of (special) relativity: the laws of physics are unaffected by reference to different inertial frames, and this can be consistently applied to electrodynamics as well as mechanics. That website also fails to mention that Einstein's approach is simpler, more general, and more elegant that that of any of the other authors it mentions. While Poincare' died before this was sorted out and well established, Lorentz said it himself in several places (most notably his revised edition of _Theory_of_Electrons_).

And even more importantly: Einstein's approach has led to all of the fundamental theories of modern physics; it is quite clear that Lorentz's approach would not have done so.


Tom Roberts
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