The Genesis of General Relativity (eBook)

Sources and Interpretations

Jürgen Renn (Herausgeber)

eBook Download: PDF

2007 | 2007
XXIX, 2099 Seiten
Springer Netherland (Verlag)
978-1-4020-4000-9 (ISBN)

Infos

This four-volume work represents the most comprehensive documentation and study of the creation of general relativity. Einstein's 1912 Zurich notebook is published for the first time in facsimile and transcript and commented on by today's major historians of science.

Additional sources from Einstein and others, who from the late 19th to the early 20th century contributed to this monumental development, are presented here in translation for the first time. The volumes offer detailed commentaries and analyses of these sources that are based on a close reading of these documents supplemented by interpretations by the leading historians of relativity.

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The transition from classical to modern physics in the ?rst half of the twentieth c- tury by quantum and relativity theories affected some of the most fundamental notions of physical thinking, such as matter, radiation, space, and time. This tran- tion thus represents a challenge for any attempt to understand the structures of a s- enti?c revolution. The present four-volume work aims at a comprehensive account of the way in which the work of Albert Einstein and his contemporaries changed our understanding of space, time, and gravitation. The conceptual framework of classical nineteenth-century physics had to be fundamentally restructured and reinterpreted in order to arrive at a theory of gravitation compatible with the new notions of space and time established in 1905 by Einstein's special theory of relativity. Whereas the classical theory of gravitation postulated an instantaneous action at a distance, Einstein's new relativistic kinematics rather suggested an analogy between the gravitational ?eld and the electromagnetic ?eld, propagating with a ?nite speed. It is therefore not surprising that Einstein was not alone in addressing the problem of formulating a theory of gravitation that complies with the kinematics of relativity t- ory. The analysis of these alternative approaches, as well as of earlier alternative approaches to gravitation within classical physics, turns out to be crucial for identi- ing the necessities and contingencies in the actual historical development.

Inhalt

Table of Contents 6
Volume 1 8
PREFACE 8
INTRODUCTION TO VOLUMES 1 AND 2: THE ZURICH NOTEBOOK AND THE GENESIS OF GENERAL RELATIVITY 14
REFERENCES 24
CLASSICAL PHYSICS IN DISARRAY 28
1. INTRODUCTION 28
2. GRAVITATION AMONG THE BORDERLINE PROBLEMS OF CLASSICAL PHYSICS 37
3. THE ROOTS OF EINSTEIN’S HEURISTICS IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF CLASSICAL AND SPECIAL RELATIVISTIC PHYSICS 66
REFERENCES 83
THE FIRST TWO ACTS 88
REFERENCES 116
PATHWAYS O UT OF CLASSICAL PHYSICS 123
1. INTRODUCTION 123
2. THE MENTAL MODEL OF FIELD THEORY 135
3. THE ELEMENTS OF EINSTEIN’S HEURISTICS 149
4. DEFAULT SETTINGS AND OPEN SLOTS IN THE LORENTZ MODEL FOR A GRAVITATIONAL FIELD EQUATION IN 1912 160
5. TESTING THE CANDIDATES: EINSTEIN’S CHECK LIST FOR GRAVITATION TENSORS 183
6. CHANGING HORSES: EINSTEIN’S CHOICE OF GRAVITATION TENSORS FROM 1912–1913 201
7. PROGRESS IN A LOOP: EINSTEIN’S GENERAL RELATIVITY AS A TRIUMPH OF THE “ENTWURF” THEORY IN THE PERIOD FROM 1913 TO 1915 232
8. THE TRANSITION FROM CLASSICAL PHYSICS TO GENERAL RELATIVITY AS A SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION 298
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 313
REFERENCES 313
EINSTEIN’S ZURICH NOTEBOOK 319
Volume 2 494
A COMMENTARY ON THE NOTES ON GRAVITY IN THE ZURICH NOTEBOOK 494
WHAT WAS EINSTEIN’S “FATEFUL PREJUDICE”? 720
WHAT DID EINSTEIN KNOW AND WHEN DID HE KNOW IT? A BESSO MEMO DATED AUGUST 1913 789
UNTYING THE KNOT: HOW EINSTEIN FOUND HIS WAY BACK TO FIELD EQUATIONS DISCARDED IN THE ZURICH NOTEBOOK 842
Index 929

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 17.6.2007
• Reihe/Serie: Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science
• Reihe/Serie: Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science
• Zusatzinfo: XXIX, 2099 p.
• Verlagsort: Dordrecht
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Erkenntnistheorie / Wissenschaftstheorie
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften ► Physik / Astronomie ► Relativitätstheorie
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften ► Physik / Astronomie ► Theoretische Physik
• Themenwelt: Technik
• Schlagworte: 4-vector • Evolution • General relativity • Gravity • Idea • Interpret • Relativity • RMS • Science • Scientific Revolution • Special relativity • Theory of relativity
• ISBN-10: 1-4020-4000-8 / 1402040008
• ISBN-13: 978-1-4020-4000-9 / 9781402040009