The Genesis of General Relativity

Sources and Interpretations
2007
ISBN: 978-1-4020-3999-7
Verlag: Springer Netherlands

Buch, Englisch, Band 250, 2099 Seiten, Format (B × H): 165 mm x 246 mm, Gewicht: 4034 g

Reihe: Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science

This four-volume work is the most comprehensive documentation and study of the development of general relativity, one of the fundamental physical theories of the 20th century. Einstein’s famous Zurich notebook, which documents pivotal steps toward general relativity, is reproduced here for the first time and transcribed in its entirety. The research by Einstein herein forms a vital part of his creation of the theory of General Relativity in 1915 from Special Relativity (1905) and Newton's law of gravitation. Additional sources from Einstein and others are presented here in translation for the first time. Also included are detailed commentaries and analyses of these sources based on a close reading of the documents, supplemented by interpretations from leading historians of relativity. All in all, the facets of this work, based on more than a decade of research, combine to constitute one of the most detailed studies of a scientific revolution ever written.

Zielgruppe

Research

Autoren/Hrsg.

Renn, Jürgen

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Erkenntnistheorie
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Wissenschafts- und Universitätsgeschichte
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften: Allgemeines Wissenschaften: Theorie, Epistemologie, Methodik
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Naturphilosophie, Philosophie und Evolution
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Wissenschaftstheorie, Wissenschaftsphilosophie
• Naturwissenschaften Physik Quantenphysik Relativität, Gravitation
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Philosophie: Allgemeines, Methoden

Inhaltsverzeichnis

to Volumes 1 and 2: The Zurich Notebook and the Genesis of General Relativity.- Classical Physics In Disarray.- The First Two Acts.- Pathways out of Classical Physics.- Einstein's Zurich Notebook.- A Commentary on the Notes on Gravity in the Zurich Notebook.- What was Einstein's “Fateful Prejudice”?.- What did Einstein know and when did He know it? A Besso Memo Dated August 1913.- Untying the Knot: how Einstein Found his way Back to Field Equations Discarded in the Zurich Notebook.- The Gravitational Force between Mechanics and Electrodynamics.- Gravitation in the Twilight of Classical Physics: An Introduction.- The Third Way to General Relativity: Einstein and Mach in Context.- Gravitation.- Considerations on Gravitation.- Absolute or Relative Motion?.- On Absolute and Relative Motion.- An Astronomical Road to a New Theory of Gravitation.- The Continuity Between Classical and Relativistic Cosmology in the Work of Karl Schwarzschild.- Things at Rest in the Universe.- A New Law of Gravitation Enforced by Special Relativity.- Breaking in the 4-Vectors: The Four-Dimensional Movement in Gravitation, 1905–1910.- On The Dynamics of the Electron (Excerpts).- Mechanics and the Relativity Postulate.- Old and New Questions in Physics (Excerpt).- The Problem of Gravitation as a Challenge for the Minkowski Formalism.- The Summit Almost Scaled: Max Abraham as a Pioneer of a Relativistic Theory of Gravitation.- On the Theory of Gravitation.- The Free Fall.- A New Theory of Gravitation.- Recent Theories of Gravitation.- A Field Theory of Gravitation in the Framework of Special Relativity.- Einstein, Nordström, and the Early Demise of Scalar, Lorentz Covariant Theories of Gravitation.- The Principle of Relativity and Gravitation.- Inertial and Gravitational Mass In RelativisticMechanics.- On the Theory of Gravitation from the Standpoint of the Principle of Relativity.- On the Present State of the Problem of Gravitation.- From Heretical Mechanics to a New Theory of Relativity.- Einstein and Mach's Principle.- On the Relativity Problem.- Ether and the Theory of Relativity.- From an Electromagnetic Theory of Matter to a New Theory of Gravitation.- Mie's Theories of Matter and Gravitation.- Foundations of a Theory of Matter (Excerpts).- Remarks Concerning Einstein's Theory of Gravitation.- The Principle of the Relativity of the Gravitational Potential.- The Momentum-Energy Law in the Electrodynamics of Gustav Mie.- Including Gravitation in a Unified Theory of Physics.- The Origin of Hilbert's Axiomatic Method1.- Hilbert's Foundation of Physics: From a Theory of Everything to a Constituent of General Relativity.- Einstein Equations and Hilbert Action: What is Missing on Page 8 of the Proofs for Hilbert's First Communication on the Foundations of Physics?1.- The Foundations of Physics.- The Foundations of Physics (First Communication).- The Foundations of Physics (Second Communication).- From Peripheral Mathematics to a New Theory of Gravitation.- The Story of Newstein or: Is Gravity Just Another Pretty Force?.- On the Relation of Non-Euclidean Geometry to Extension Theory.- Notion of Parallelism on a General Manifold and Consequent Geometrical Specification of the Riemannian Curvature (Excerpts).- Purely Infinitesimal Geometry (Excerpt).- The Dynamics of Continuous Media and the Notion of an Affine Connection on Space-Time.