Relativity Principles and Theories from Galileo to Einstein

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