Re: What is the history of relativity theory? (continuation of Poincare thread)


See

http://canonicalscience.blogspot.com/2005/08/what-is-history-of-relativity-theory.html

for additional details and references.

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cmaj10@xxxxxxxxx on 4 Aug 2005 15:11:12 +0000 (UTC) wrote:

That being said, I can buy Einstein's claim that he was unaware of
Poincare's work; but it's hard to imagine that the editor of Annalen
der Physik wasn't: this person was none other than Max Planck.

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It appears that both Planck and Hilbert were rather interested in the
publicity of Einstein paper. Perhaps did it for the competition with
French physics?

Einstein claimed that newer read Poincaré and just Lorentz work of 1895
for sustaining his thesis of that his 1905 work was independent.

His colleagues Maurice Solovine and Carl Seelig reported that Einstein had
read the Poincaré book La Science et l'hypothèse around 1902-1904
contradicting Einstein. Einstein?s position at the Swiss office patent in
charge of "electromagnetism" implied that part of his job was to read and
summarized the main publications on this topic. There is some evidence
that Poincaré works were usually read and discussed on Einstein place. A
colleague informed to me that Einstein used the same notation that Lorentz
in a paper of 1904 therefore contradicting above Einstein claims. The
question is at what extension Einstein read and copied work of others
saying not the true? It has been recently shown that Einstein also did not
say the true to Hilbert, copying Hilbert work as own work without citing
him.

Why a so-claimed genius of physics doing research so different of others
would follow those very questionable ways if he was in a supreme position
over the rest of normal physicists and mathematicians. Obliviously the
only explaining for that Einstein did not say the true on priority issues
is that his own work is not very different from the work of others.

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harald.vanlintel@xxxxxxx on 4 Aug 2005 15:11:12 +0000 (UTC) wrote:

Lorentz, Poincare and Einstein are all credited in good text books for their
contributions:

- Lorentz to first propose a rudimentory version of SRT
- Poincare to next come up with the Lorentz Transformations in order to
fulfill the PoR
- Einstein to next derive the LT from the PoR

And there were (of course) also some others who are worth of credit.

Often for simplicity only Einstein is mentioned because he developed the
general theory of relativity as well.

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I cannot agree in almost books of science, manuals and popular books
Einstien is credited like the father of relativity theory. In fact the
misunderstanding of people is so great that many people believe that
Einstein received the nobel Prixe for relativity theory. I already cited a
example of good book (standard Jackson on electrodynamics) where only
Einstein is credited. Jackson claims that Poincaré did ?philosophy?.

I do not see Einstein?s derivation of the LT from the PoR as a
breakthrough, since there is no net new physics contained in it that one
cannot find before that. I see it like interesting or very interesting. In
fact, Einstein derivation of LT from PoR alone is WRONG, full of
additional assumptions and incorrect mathematical details, which imply
that he know previously relativistic theories of Poincaré and Lorentz, and
LT in final form. Contrary to popular claim the LT does NOT follow from
Einstein PoR. He fact, that Einstein did notice this fact imply to me that
had not a good understanding of relativity physics. Einstein derivation of
LT appears like an attempt to split his version of relativity from that of
Lorentz and Poincaré.

As shown recently the paternity of GR is not from Einstein.

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see.URL@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Martin Ouwehand) on 4 Aug 2005 15:11:13 +0000
(UTC) wrote:

In the article <1123101871.423815.299170@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Perspicacious <iperspicacious@xxxxxxxxx> writes:

] Why isn't the mathematician Henri Poincaré acknowledged as the true
] discoverer of the special theory of relativity?

because he didn't discover the theory of relativity as we now understand it.

But despite this, Poincaré still believed somehow in the aether and that
the speed of light is *not* the same in all inertial frames: for example
in his 1909 Conference [1], he explains that it is not possible to
synchronize two clocks A and B *which are mutually at rest* by exchanging
light signals because, if they were moving (I guess with respect to the
aether), the time for trip A->B wouldn't be the same as the time for trip
B->A, by an amount which it is impossible to determine, because the
principle of relativity.

He certainly did not explain, as Einstein did, the changes to the concepts
of space and time that follow from the theory of relativity.

All claims about Poincaré's priority come from the fact that in his
article [2] "Sur la Dynamique de l'Électron" he does show that the Maxwell
equations are invariant under the Lorentz transformation. But this article
is a follow-up to an article by Lorentz [3] were the Lorentz transformation
is presented *as a formal change of variables* used to show that the Lorentz
contraction, together with an hypothesis about the transformation of forces,
would explain why it is impossible to detect any movement with respect to
the aether. Indeed, Poincaré sometimes uses a phrase like "the real electron
corresponds through the Lorentz transformation to an ideal electron..."
Nowhere do Lorentz or Poincaré say that the Lorentz transformation connects
space-time measurements in two inertial frames in relative motion.

Finally, the bulk of Poincaré's article is devoted to a *dynamical*
explanation of the Lorentz contraction (he has to postulate some kind of
"pressure" inside the electron to do this), whereas we now believe with
Einstein that the Lorentz contraction is purely kinematical.

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It is true that Poincaré didn't discover the theory of relativity as ?we
now understand it?, but that is not an excuse for omitting his name like
ONE of the fathers of relativity. The popular claim that Einstein derived
special relativity alone is an clear injustice. Moreover it is difficult
understand that mean ?the theory of relativity as we now understand it?,

I think that a theory is the collection of mathematical formulas more
physical principles and insight. About this, Einstein did NONE of formulas
of SR, did NOT many of modern insight (e.g. Einstein newer formulated a
four-momentum, Poincaré was pioneer in recognizing that c was a limiting
speed for any body, etc.), the group theoretical approach that is thought
in modern books is from Poincaré no from Einstein, etc. Moreover, of the
two ?Einstein? principles, one is from Poincaré and the other, constancy
of c, is easily derived from the LT.

The popular but wrong idea of a great difference between pre-Einstein and
post-Einstein physics (as a basis for Einstein total priority in these
issues) is even broke by Einstein thought in posterior years

Surprisingly, however, it turned out that a sufficiently sharpened
conception of time was all that was needed to overcome the difficulty
discussed. One had only to realize that an auxiliary quantity introduced
by H. A. Lorentz, and named by him ?local time?, could be defined as
?time? in general. If one adheres to this definition of time, the basic
equations of Lorentz?s, theory correspond to the principle of relativity .
.. .

But that was basically obtained by Poincaré, according to Lorentz,

In one of them were used ? such was my reasoning ? coordinate axes with a
definite position in ether and what could be termed true time; in the
other, on the contrary, one simply dealt with subsidiary quantities
introduced with the aid of a mathematical trick. Thus, for instance, the
variable t&#8242; could not be called time in the same sense as the
variable t. Given such reasoning, I did not think of describing phenomena
in the reference system x&#8242;, y&#8242;, z&#8242;, t&#8242; in
precisely the same way, as in the reference system x, y, z, t . . . I
later saw from the article by Poincaré that, if I had acted in a more
systematic manner, I could have achieved an even more significant
simplification. Having not noticed this, I was not able to achieve total
invariance of the equations; my formulae remained cluttered up with excess
terms, that should have vanished. These terms were too small to influence
phenomena noticeably, and by this fact I could explain their independence
of the Earth?s motion, revealed by observations, but I did not establish
the relativity principle as a rigorous and universal truth. On the
contrary, Poincaré achieved total invariance of the equations of
electrodynamics and formulated the relativity postulate ? a term first
introduced by him . . . I may add that, while thus correcting the defects
of my work, he never reproached me for them.
I am unable to present here all the beautiful results obtained by
Poincaré. Nevertheless let me stress some of them. First, he did not
restrict himself by demonstration that the relativistic transformations
left the form of electromagnetic equations unchangeable. He explained this
success of transformations by the opportunity to present these equations
as a consequence of the least action principle and by the fact that the
fundamental equation expressing this principle and the operations used in
derivation of the field equations are identical in systems x, y, z, t and
x&#8242;, y&#8242;, z&#8242;, t&#8242;.

?the theory of relativity as we now understand it? is a 4D formulation.
Einstein newer achieved that. It was again Poincaré who did pioneering
work.

I remind on these ideas by Poincaré because they are closed to methods
later used by Minkowski and other scientists to easing mathematical
actions in the theory of relativity.?

The idea of that great difference between Poincaré theory and Einstein
theory may be wrong is aether. From Poincaré 1902 Poincaré book ? La
Science et l'hypothèse? (no absolute time, no absolute space, no aether
... ). This book was read by Einstein around 1903. It is true that after
Poincaré return to aether in 1908 but his conception of aether is not an
absolute aeither it is akind of physical mediator instead of vacuum. The
aeheter of Poincaré is not a mechanism for absolute motion since may
verify the principle of relativity. Moreover, and this is very interesting
for me, Einstein also returned to the concept of aether around 1920.

Why is 1908 Poincaré aether used for eliminating to him from citing on
history whereas 1920 Einstein aether is newer used against Einstein?

Einstein clock synchronizing procedure is mainly based in own Poincaré
method of 1900. Yes, perhaps he ?did go down? with his return to aether
but is not an impediment for priority of his works before 1905. Or would
1920 Einstein returns to aether also be used for eliminating annus
mirabillis papers from citing?

Before Einstein did Poincaré already explained the changes to the concepts
of space and time that follow from the theory of relativity. E.g. on ?La
science et l?hypothèse? (1902), Poincaré said ?there is no absolute time?

I think that Poincaré established that the Lorentz transformation connects
space-time measurements in two inertial frames in relative motion when
obtained the Minkoski invariant ds in 1906 (data of publication, a short
resume of ideas of this work were presented previously even before 1905
Einstein paper was submitted).

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cmaj10@xxxxxxxxx on 5 Aug 2005 10:45:01 +0000 (UTC) wrote:

It's hard for me to doubt the sincerity of such a great man, but yes
there are troubling facts that are hard to swallow. I found
Perspicacious' links very interesting, especially the arxiv document. I
have merely glanced at it yet, and already I keep telling myself "say
it ain't so". Just consider the fact that it is Poincare who gave the
equations that he dubbed himself the "Lorentz transformations", and
there you have Einstein using exactly the same term, and decades later
he claimed that he only was aware of Lorentz's work in 1895. Pure
coincidence? Maybe, but as I said: hard to swallow. So far I've barely
glanced at Poincare's discussion on silmulataneity, but it was enough
to give me a feeling of deja vu.

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Still more interesting is that Einstein used the same notation that
Lorentz in his 1904 article. Another coincidence?

Why do not explicitly say that Einstein was a genius of ?plagiarism? in
the light of abundant data.

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helbig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx on 7 Aug 2005 22:04:44 +0000 (UTC) wrote:

even if Einstein had been motivated by the null result of the
Michelson-Morley experiment,

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Michel Janssen says that popular idea about the theoretician worried by
the MM experiment is just legend, no history.

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helbig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx on 7 Aug 2005 22:04:44 +0000 (UTC) wrote:

Sometimes its Poincaré, sometimes it's Mileva Maric, sometimes it's
Lorentz who was supposed to have been there first, only to get cheated
out by Einstein; sometimes it is the statement that OF COURSE Einstein
was heavily influenced by the Michelson-Morley experiment. All of these
claims have been debunked. See, for example, Pais's excellent SUBTLE IS
THE LORD. (The title is a translation of Einstein's famous phrase
"Raffiniert ist der Herrgott, aber boshaft ist er nicht; Einstein's own
translation was "God is slick, but he ain't mean".)

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1) There is nothing wrong with revising our historical thoughts.

2) That can be danger only if the old version of history was not
infallible, and full of mistakes and imprecision. If is not the case do
not worry!

3) Pais book is good but is not conclusive in some crucial points and
flagrantly wrong in others. The books of history, as books of science, are
subjected to continuous revision. History is an evolutionary field. There
is not one version of history and remains forever untouchable. That is
surprising is the tacit attitude of many physicists and believers of
?please do not study history of relativity again. Einstein is our myth, do
not break it even if you say is correct?

-------
Juan R. González-Álvarez

Center for CANONICAL |SCIENCE)



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