An Introduction to Relativity

Einstein's Theories of Relativity and Gravitation by Albert Einstein, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. An Introduction to Relativity

AN INTRODUCTION TO RELATIVITY

A Treatment in Which the Mathematical Connections of Einstein’s Work are Brought Out More Strongly and More Successfully Than Usual in a Popular Explanation

BY HAROLD T. DAVIS, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN, Madison, Wis.

One of the first questions which appears in philosophy is this: What is the great reality that underlies space and time and the phenomena of the physical universe? Kant, the philosopher, dismissed it as a subjective problem, affirming that space and time are “a priori” concepts beyond which we can say no more.

Then the world came upon some startling facts. In 1905 a paper appeared by Professor Albert Einstein which asserted that the explanation of certain remarkable discoveries in physics gave us a new conception of this strange four-dimensional manifold in which we live. Thus, the great difference between the space and time of philosophy and the new knowledge is the objective reality of the latter. It rests upon an amazing sequence of physical facts, and the generalized theory, which appeared several years later, founded as it is upon the abstruse differential calculus of Riemann, Christoffel, Ricci and Levi-Civita, emerges from its maze of formulas [241]with the prediction of real phenomena to be sought for the in the world of facts.

We shall, therefore, approach the subject from this objective point of view. Let us go to the realm of actual physical events and see how the ideas of relativity gradually unfolded themselves from the first crude wonderings of science to the stately researches that first discovered the great ocean of ether and then penetrated in such a marvelous manner into some of its most mysterious properties.

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This book is part of the public domain. Albert Einstein (2020). Einstein's Theories of Relativity and Gravitation. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022.

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