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4 months ago in History of Physics By Pooja

Is einstein’s relativity actually that profound, or did he just finish what others started?

I'm working on a historiography paper about scientific revolutions versus incrementalism. The case of relativity keeps pulling me in. When I read Lorentz's electron theory and Poincaré's convention-alism, I see so much of the formalism already present. I want to understand how historians of physics actually adjudicate this kind of credit attribution question.

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By Aamir Answered 1 month ago

The math was in the air, but the physical postulates were pure Einstein. Lorentz thought his transformations were about some mysterious ether effect. Einstein said: no ether. Light speed is invariant. All inertial observers are equivalent. That shift from tinkering with equations to redefining space and time itself is the revolution. The math existed. The meaning didn't. That's what Einstein gave us.

By Manish Answered 2 months ago

This question gets to the heart of how science really progresses. From my study of the original papers, here's my view: Lorentz and Poincaré had the pieces the transformations, the electron dynamics, even the light-speed postulate. What they lacked was the willingness to let go of the ether. Lorentz insisted on a true rest frame; Poincaré called the postulates "convenient." Einstein's profundity wasn't in discovering new mathematics, but in the philosophical audacity to say: what if the ether is superfluous? What if we take the postulates as literally true and rebuild kinematics from scratch? That leap from description to principle is the revolutionary act. He finished what others started by changing what kind of question they were asking.

 

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