Motion is always relative to some thing. Is this thing a concrete body like the earth, is it an abstract space, or is it an imagined frame? Do the laws of physics depend on the choice of reference? It there a choice for which the laws are simplest? Is this choice unique? Is there a physical
cause for the choice made?
These questions traverse the history of modern physics from Galileo to Einstein. The answers involved Galilean relativity, Newton's absolute space, the purely relational concepts of Descartes, Leibniz, and Mach, and many forgotten uses of relativity principles in mechanics, optics, and
electrodynamics - until the relativity theories of Poincaré, Einstein, Minkowksi, and Laue radically redefined space and time to satisfy universal kinds of relativity.
Accordingly, this book retraces the emergence of relativity principles in early modern mechanics, documents their constructive use in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century mechanics, optics, and electrodynamics, and gives a well-rooted account of the genesis of special and general relativity in the
early twentieth century. As an exercise in long-term history, it demonstrates the connectivity of issues and approaches across several centuries, despite enormous changes in context and culture. As an account of the genesis of relativity theories, it brings unprecedented clarity and fullness by
broadening the spectrum of resources on which the principal actors drew.
Author(s): Olivier Darrigol
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 496
City: Oxford
Cover
Titlepage
Copyright
Contents
Preface
Conventions and notations
1 RETHINKING MOTION IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
1.1 Galileo's science of motion
1.2 Beeckman and Descartes on free fall
1.3 Descartes's world
1.4 Newton's laws of motion
1.5 Huygens's mechanics
Conclusions
2 DERIVING NEWTON'S SECOND LAW FROM RELATIVITY PRINCIPLES
2.1 Rational mechanics in the eighteenth century
2.2 Nineteenth-century French textbooks
2.3 Principles and deductions
Conclusions
3 THE SPACE–TIME–INERTIA TANGLE
3.1 From Huygens to Kant
3.2 Criticism in the last third of the nineteenth century
3.3 The measurement of time
Conclusions
4 THE OPTICS OF MOVING BODIES
4.1 The speed of light
4.2 The corpuscular approach
4.3 Stellar aberrations in the wave theory
4.4 The Fresnel drag
4.5 Toward an optical relativity
Conclusions
5 THE ELECTRODYNAMICS OF MOVING BODIES
5.1 Early electrodynamics
5.2 German action at a distance
5.3 British field theories
5.4 Maxwell in Germany
5.5 Effects of absolute motion
5.6 The separation of ether and matter
Conclusions
6 POINCARÉ'S RELATIVITY THEORY
6.1 Critical teaching
6.2 For the Lorentz jubilee
6.3 Inside the electron
6.4 The postulate of relativity
Conclusions
7 THE RELATIVITY THEORY OF EINSTEIN, MINKOWSKI, AND LAUE
7.1 The young Einstein's ventures in electrodynamics
7.2 Alternatives to Lorentz's theory
7.3 Einstein's relativity theory
7.4 Early reception 1905–1908
7.5 Constructing a relativistic electron
7.6 Outside Germany
Conclusions
8 FROM RIEMANN TO RICCI
8.1 Gauss's curved surfaces
8.2 Riemann's curvature
8.3 Non-Euclidean geometries
8.4 The absolute differential calculus
Conclusions
9 MOSTLY EINSTEIN: TO GENERAL RELATIVITY
9.1 Heuristic arguments (1906–1911)
9.2 The static theory of 1912
9.3 The Zürich notebook
9.4 The Entwurf theory of 1913
9.5 The scalar theory
9.6 Bridled covariance
9.7 Justified transformations and adapted coordinates
9.8 November 1915
Conclusions
10 MESH AND MEASURE IN EARLY GENERAL RELATIVITY
10.1 A Gaussian preliminary
10.2 Einstein's Grundlage of 1916
10.3 The gravitational redshift
10.4 The gravitational deflection of light
10.5 The advance of Mercury's perihelion
Conclusions
11 EPILOGUE
11.1 Actors and stages
11.2 Mechanical relativity
11.3 Optical relativity
11.4 Electrodynamic relativity
11.5 Special relativity
11.6 General relativity
Abbreviations
References
Index
