Lecture 6: Reception of Special Relativity

MIT STS.042J / 8.225J Einstein, Oppenheimer, Feynman: Physics in the 20th Century, Fall 2020
Instructor: David Kaiser

Prof. Kaiser discusses early reactions to relativity, Minkowski and spacetime, and Cambridge Wranglers and relativity.

License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA

[PrajwelPj]

I disagree that Einstein shouldn't have annoyed his professors. Precisely because he did it, he had to work at the patent office and had enough time to read and be influenced by the varied ideas.

[tytrdev]

Loving this content as I ramp back up on math and physics to try and tackle QM. Does anyone have any recommendations for courses/lectures/readings that tackle the history of computer science in a similar way?

[johnryskamp]

Look in Einstein's book Relativity. You will see the train experiment. Note where Einstein says that points M and M' "fallt zwar zusammen." That term creates a logical problem. It's translated in English as point M "naturally coincides" with point M'. That is, it treats zwar as an informality, or even as a pun. Whatever zwar presupposes--language only represents, it does not exist, I suppose--the logical problem is that there is, in the proof, no definition of a "natural" or zwar coincidence of point. SR's definition of the coincidence of points is the Euclidean definition, of course.

Thus, you have an undefined term rattling around in the proof. There is no way to understand the meaning of the natural coincidence of M and M', and if you eliminate the zwar and let the two points coincide, you have one Cartesian coordinate system although two are assumed, that is, you are led to an internal inconsistency. So SR is either meaningless or internally inconsistent. In consequence, you cannot go on to prove either SR or GR.

This anomaly is easy to miss, but it is characteristic of anomalies that they are passed over, at least for a while, because they are an idea which is commonly shared and is regarded by many readers as unremarkable. It is, nevertheless, fatal to the SR argument.

By the way, the anomaly exists in transmuted form in the 1905 paper, where it is a little difficult to tease out of the argument.

There is an amusing, and no doubt unconscious, attempt to deal with the anomaly in the Italian translation of Relativity.

[krzysztofciuba]

Not too funny: a lot of missing. A scandalous interpretation of Lorentz formula by both the mathematician Minkowski, and a poor one A.E.- an excuse! Do the homework: calculate the "space-time interval" in Minkowski space-time, i.e., a ...complex plane (x, ict) - easier than in not-Minkowski "space-time": (x, ct)- more confusing but the same...result: the space-time distance is NOT PATH DEPENDENT that is contra any textbook on the subject! It is a plain calculus in complex plain! H. Minkowski was right: Lorentz formula is a geometric transformation; hence, why...physicists treat it as a ..dynamical transformation, that started already in A.E. 1905's "particular consequence"??? Wake up! Yeh, start to properly interpret ...experiments (with atomic clocks and "muon"( a mysterious statistical entity!)