This paper discusses the controversy between philosophers of science (e.g. Grünbaum) and historians of science (e.g. Holton) regarding Einstein's discovery of STR. Although Holton is surely correct on the historical point that experimental results (especially the Michelson-Morley experiment) had little influence on Einstein's development of STR, this fact is not sufficient to establish his (and Polanyi's) claim that major scientific discoveries are primarily matters of private, nonspecifiable insights into physical reality. It is possible that Einstein's work was based primarily on (...) non-empirical but nonetheless publicly discussable, objective considerations. And a more comprehensive survey of the discovery of STR shows that this was indeed the case and thus excludes STR as a supporting instance of Holton's and Polanyi's assertions of the primacy of "private science.". (shrink)

It is a matter of record that Henri Poincaré never responded publicly to Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity (RT). Since almost no private papers of Poincaré are available, his attitude toward Einstein's work and his silence on that score become somewhat of a mystery. It is almost certain that Poincaré knew of Einstein's work in RT. First, he was fluent in German, having learned it as a young man when the Germans occupied his home town of Nancy in 1870. Second, (...) he often reported to the members of theAcadémie des Scienceson current work in electrodynamics in Germany. It is highly improbable that he would have missed the abstract of Einstein's first paper on RT or the subsequent articles by Einstein on the subject, especially those which were translated into French, since they were in areas directly related to his own interests in theoretical physics. (shrink)

In his original paper of 1905, "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies", Einstein described a procedure for synchronizing distant clocks at rest in any inertial system K. Clocks thus synchronized may be said to be in standard signal synchrony in K. It has often been claimed that there are no logical or physical reasons for preferring standard signal synchronizations to any of a range of possible non-standard ones. In this paper, the range of consistent non-standard signal synchronizations, first for any (...) one inertial system, and second for any set of such systems, is investigated, and it is shown that the requirement of consistency leaves much less room for choice than is commonly supposed. Nevertheless consistent non-standard signal synchronizations appear to be possible. However, it is also shown that good physical reasons for preferring standard signal synchronizations exist, if the Special Theory of Relativity yields correct predictions. The thesis of the conventionality of distant simultaneity espoused particularly by Reichenbach and Grunbaum is thus either trivialized or refuted. (shrink)

In the static field configuration, a spatially-Variable Speed of Light (VSL) scalar gravity model with Lorentz-Poincaré interpretation was shown to reproduce the phenomenology implied by the Schwarzschild metric. In the present development, we effectively cover configurations with source kinematics due to an induced sweep velocity field w. The scalar-vector model now provides a Hamiltonian description for particles and photons in full accordance with the first Post-Newtonian (1-PN) approximation of General Relativity Theory (GRT). This result requires the validity of Poincaré’s Principle (...) of Relativity, i.e. the unobservability of ‘preferred’ frame movement. Poincaré’s principle fixes the amplitude of the sweep velocity field of the moving source, or equivalently the ‘vector potential’ ξ of GRT (e.g.; S. Weinberg, Gravitation and cosmology, [1972]), and provides the correct 1-PN limit of GRT. The implementation of this principle requires acceleration transformations derived from gravitationally modified Lorentz transformations. A comparison with the acceleration transformation in GRT is done. The present scope of the model is limited to weak-field gravitation without retardation and with gravitating test particles. In conclusion the model’s merits in terms of a simpler space, time and gravitation ontology—in terms of a Lorentz-Poincaré-type interpretation—are explained (e.g. for ‘frame dragging’, ‘harmonic coordinate condition’). (shrink)