(Stanley) On The Histories of Relativity

On the Histories of Relativity: The Propagation and Elaboration of Relativity Theory in Participant Histories in Germany, 1905-1911 Author(s): Richard
Staley Reviewed work(s): Source: Isis, Vol. 89, No. 2 (Jun., 1998), pp. 263-299 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/237756 . Accessed: 02/04/2012 08:08
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On
the
Histories
of
Relativity
The Propagationand Elaborationof Relativity Histories in Germany, Theory in Participant 1905-1911

By Richard Staley*
ABSTRACT
This essay explores the history and historiographyof relativity through a study of the earliest, participant,histories of the subject. The authorargues that participanthistories from Einstein, Planck, Minkowski, and others provided an importantmeans of shaping of relativity-at a time when the theory was subjectto majorcontroversy understandings and debate.One featureof the study is thus a detailedinvestigationof the use of historical resources in scientific research. Second, the accounts discussed provide a means of surof auveying the developmentof relativityin Germany.Here their changing attributions thorship-and the particularnature of research histories offered by Einstein and Minkowski-reveal features of the relationshipbetween the work of Lorentz, Einstein, and built up by previoushistorians. Minkowskithatare in some tension with the understanding The study therefore offers a new perspective on the complex process through which a pluralityof approaches-many relativitieswith many histories-could become singularone theory, one history-and through which the work of Einstein came to be sharply distinguishedfrom that of others.
of MovJN 1905 ALBERTEINSTEINOPENEDHIS PAPER "Onthe Electrodynamics theory a well-known ing Bodies" with the observationthat accordingto contemporary asymmetryexisted in the kind of explanationgiven for the phenomenaof electrodynamic induction. That the customaryapproachto the history of relativity leads to asymmetries that do not appearto be inherentin the phenomenais not yet well known. Consider the treatmentof Einstein's work in comparisonto that of his contemporaries,for example. Historianshave approachedEinstein with a primaryinterest in the inception of his now* Morris Fishbein Center for the History of Science and Medicine, University of Chicago, 1126 East 59th Street, Chicago, Illinois 60637. Association for Different versions of this essay have been presentedat the annualmeeting of the Australasian the History,Philosophy,and Social Studiesof Science in June 1996, at seminarsat the universitiesof Manchester, for their comments and Skuli Cambridge,and Chicago, and for REHSEISin Paris in 1997. I thankparticipants Sigurdsson,Otto Sibum, ElisabethEmter,Andrew Mendelsohn,Olivier Darrigol, Scott Walter,Leo Corry,and anonymousreferees for their careful readingand many helpful suggestions.
Isis, 1998, 89:263-299 ?D1998 by The History of Science Society. All rights reserved. 0021-1753/98/8902-0003$02.00 263
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ON THE HISTORIESOF RELATIVITY
famous 1905 study. They have investigatedin detail the lines of thoughtthat might have led to the paperbut have devoted comparativelylittle attentionto the period immediately in which Einstein sought to develop and propagaterelativitywithin the physics afterward, community.On the otherhand,with some important exceptions,Einstein'scontemporaries have been of interest very largely to the extent to which their work shows evidence that they understoodor misunderstood Einstein's interpretation of relativity.'While historians would generally recognize the desirabilityof being able to explain the characterof such responses to relativity on the basis of a deeper appreciationof other physicists' research programson their own terms, it has proved surprisinglydifficultto follow throughsuch a historiographicalprogramconsistently.2Rather, studies of other physicists' work have often gone hand in hand with an evaluative contrastwith Einstein's approach.Many excellent and detailed studies have taken it for grantedthat the most importanttask for a physicist post 1905 was to assimilate Einstein's paper, ratherthan working with the recognition that all concerned(Einsteinincluded) read and interactedwith his work, if at all, with the significantlymore open aim of developing physics further.Thus what might be termed inception and reception accounts have dominatedhistorical studies, and unrecognized inconsistenciesin historicalscrutinyhave flowed from this, obscuringmany subtleties of the process by which relativitywas developed.3 In orderto throw light on this complex process of development,I will here investigate the very first, participant,histories of relativity. Written by physicists in the period in which relativity was actively being elaborated,the "histories"I refer to vary from the citationsof the theoryto extendedtreatments conjunctionof specific names in abbreviated presentedin majorresearcharticles.While some of these resourceshave been considered by previous historians,discussion of them has often been unduly limited by an implicit inception/receptionmethodology. But on the whole these texts have drawn very little of relativity. They are notice, either as histories or as contributionsto the interpretation significantprecisely because they are both.
I Stanley Goldberg's and Lewis Pyenson's important studies of Max Planck's reasons for takingup relativity, and his activities in propagatingthe theory, have long providedthe most sensitive and wide-rangingaccounts of anotherphysicist's approachto relativity. See Stanley Goldberg, "Max Planck's Philosophy of Nature and His Elaborationof the Special Theory of Relativity,"Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences, 1976, 7:125160; Lewis Pyenson, "PhysicalSense in Relativity:Max Planck Edits the Annalen der Physik, 1906-1918," in The YoungEinstein: TheAdventof Relativity(Bristol/Boston:Adam Hilger, 1985), pp. 194-214; and Pyenson, Receptionof Relativity,ed. ThomasGlick (Boston in The Comparative "TheRelativityRevolutionin Germany," Studies in the Philosophyof Science, 103) (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1987), pp. 59-111, esp. pp. 96-101. For the 1905 Annalen der Physik, 1905, 17:891-921. bewegter Korper," paper see Albert Einstein, "ZurElectrodynamik 2 For my own attemptto pursue a programof this kind in relation to Max Born see Richard Staley, "Max Born and the GermanPhysics Community:The Educationof a Physicist"(Ph.D. diss., Univ. Cambridge,1992). A numberof recent studies by Andrew Warwick,Olivier Darrigol,and Leo Corryhave criticized the Einsteinfocused methodology of previous work on, respectively, British responses to relativity, Henri Poincare and Germanelectrodynamics,and HermannMinkowski. See A. C. Warwick, "CambridgeMathematicsand Cavendish Physics: Cunningham,Campbell, and Einstein's Relativity, 1905-1911, Pt. 1: The Uses of Theory," Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 1992, 23:625-656, "Pt. 2: ComparingTraditionsin Cambridge Physics,"ibid., 1993,24:1-25; Olivier Darrigol,"HenriPoincare'sCriticismof Fin-De-Siecle Electrodynamics," Studiesin the Historyand Philosophyof ModernPhysics, 1995, 26: 1-44, on p. 2; Darrigol,"TheElectrodynamic Minkowski Origins of Relativity Theory,"Hist. Stud. Phys. Sci., 1996, 26:241-312; and Leo Corry,"Hermann fur Wissenschaftsgeschichte,Preprint40), Archivefor and the Postulate of Relativity" (Max-Planck-Institut History of Exact Sciences, 1997, 51:273-314. 3 Two examples of such inconsistencies, which I will discuss in detail, concern historians'selective use of the of relativity and historians' neglect term "Lorentz-Einstein" as an indicationof physicists' (mis)understanding of the theory and its past. Note that my of Einstein's 1907 review of relativity as a source for understandings argumentis not against inception and reception studies as such, but against some of the assumptionsthat can limit their approach.Given my focus on historiesof relativityalone, the accountthatfollows is itself a reception study. I discuss some of its limitationsin the Conclusion.
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Discussions of the uses of history in the sciences and related studies on the generation accounts very clearlythatscientists'retrospective of discoveryaccountshave demonstrated the past in the light of presentprogramsand disciplinaryaims.4These elide and reinterpret studies have often had a broad, disciplinaryfocus and have shown that scientists employ historical accounts to establish a canon and shape the boundariesof a discipline by refrom the announcementof eclipse readingthe past from the end of science.5Particularly observations confirming Einstein's general theory in 1919, relativity (and its histories) came to representa defining achievementof the new subdisciplineof theoreticalphysics, which was highly visible both within the physics discipline and to the general public. However, my initial focus is differentand more fine grainedthanthatcommonly explored in accounts of disciplinaryhistories. Here I investigate the role of protohistoriesand hisof the understandings clarifying,and stabilizingparticular toricalreasoningin articulating, physical content and broaderimplicationsof relativity(and its history)in the period up to 1911-while the theory was under active development,at a time when the concepts and achievementsconcerned were insecure and highly contested. But my study will suggest many continuitiesbetween work of this natureandthe place of relativityin the disciplinary profile of theoretical physics and mathematics.These are evident, for example, in the of relativity and disciplinarypolitics that are linkages between particularunderstandings displayed explicitly in some of the writings I discuss from Max Planck and Hermann Minkowski. Given that innovative work in physics depends on the ability to draw on and depart andthatthe subjectis in a significantsense of previouspractitioners from the contributions thatvariousforms of historicalreferenceandreasoningshould archival,it is not surprising be importantin the practice of physics-whether this is implicit or explicit, carriedout In the following I am largelybut not exclusively consciously or not, in differentinstances.6 concerned with what can be described as a genre of "researchhistories,"explicitly historical but highly selective accounts of the emergence and implications of a theory, experiment, or discovery that are presented in major research or research review papers.
4 On the natureof retrospectivereportageand participant histories see Thomas S. Kuhn, "RevisitingPlanck," Hist. Stud. Phys. Sci., 1983, 14:231-251; G. Nigel Gilbert and Michael Mulkay, "ExperimentsAre the Key: Participants'Histories and Historians'Histories of Science," Isis, 1984, 75:105-125; and Steven Shapin,"Talking History:Reflections on Discourse Analysis," ibid., pp. 125-128 (a response to Gilbertand Mulkay). On the importantgenre of discovery accounts see S. W. Woolgar, "Writingan IntellectualHistory of Scientific Development:The Use of Discovery Accounts,"Social Studiesof Science, 1976, 6:359-422; andAugustineBrannigan, York:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1981). For disciplinary TheSocial Basis of ScientificDiscoveries (Cambridge/New histories see, in particular,Loren Graham,Wolf Lepenies, and Peter Weingart, eds., Functions and Uses of Reidel, 1983); Shapin,"Disciplineand Bounding:The HisDisciplinaryHistories (Dordrecht/Boston/Lancaster: Debate,"History of Science, 1992, tory and Sociology of Science as Seen throughthe Externalism-Internalism 30:333-369; and Rachel Laudan,"Historiesof the Sciences and Their Uses: A Review to 1913," ibid., 1993, 31:1-34. For a recent historicalstudy of disciplinaryhistories of physical chemistrysee Diana KormosBarkan, "A Usable Past: Creating Disciplinary Space for Physical Chemistry,"in The Invention of Physical Science: Intersectionsof Mathematics,Theology,and NaturalPhilosophysince the SeventeenthCentury:Essays in Honor of Erwin N. Hiebert, ed. Mary Jo Nye, Joan L. Richards,and Roger Stuewer (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 139) (Dordrecht:Kluwer, 1992), pp. 175-202. 5 Peter Galison used this expression to describe the process by which Maxwell's equationshave been succesfrom the point of view of relativity and grand unified field theories: Peter Galison, "Resively reinterpreted reading the Past from the End of Physics: Maxwell's Equationsin Retrospect,"in Functions and Uses of DisciplinaryHistories, ed. Grahamet al., pp. 35-51. of Bohr's 6 For a study thatpays attention to a form of historicaldiscussion in physics see Darrigol's treatment use of an analogywith classical physics in the developmentof quantumtheory:OlivierDarrigol,Fromc-Numbers to q-Numbers:The Classical Analogy in the Historyof QuantumTheory(Berkeley/LosAngeles: Univ. California Press, 1992). It is possible thatthe work discussed here providedsome kind of model for Bohr's researchthrough its establishmentof a productivecontrastbetween classical and relativisticphysics.
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Otherkinds of historicalreferenceto be discussed range from the judgmentsthat may be implied by citing a body of work by specific names (such as "Lorentz-Einstein" or "relativity" theory) through to Minkowski's proposal of a counterfactualhistory and Max Laue's elaborateuse of a concept of "historicalnecessity"in the firsttextbookon relativity in 1911. I will not attempt to delineate all the forms of historical reasoning active in physics, but I should say that I do not think those discussed here exhaust the ways physicists work with history. The significance of textual materialof this naturehas often escaped the attentionof historiansof relativity owing to the rathernarrowfocus on novel in many inception/reception achievementand correct(Einsteinian)interpretation accounts. Here I will not take it for grantedthat the proper interpretation-or a fully constituted theory of relativity-can be taken to inhere essentially and self-evidently in Einstein's 1905 paper alone. Rather,considering a period in which research in the field was both controversialand uncertainin its implicationsand scope, my study will provide a means of charting the gradualprocess throughwhich Einstein's work in particularcame to be regardedas distinctivelyfoundationalof an emerging new theory. My argumentis that numeroushistoricalresources, now largely forgotten,constituted an importantcomponent of the work involved in forming, clarifying, and propagating of relativity in the German physics community. My approach particularinterpretations here has many similaritieswith insightful sociological studies of the kind of interpretative work involved in readingdata at the laboratorybench. It stems from the view that physicists' approachesto new theory are stronglyformed throughdrawingcontrastsand comparisonswith relatedand historicallyantecedentwork and thatthese comparisons,and the understandingsthat result, are often expressed in narrativeform in research histories. Accordingly, I explore the sense in which the present is shaped in the light of the past at least as much as the past is rewrittenin the light of the present.The protohistories I discuss were not the only factor shaping the developmentof theoreticalunderstanding; but in the task of widening our accounts of theoreticalphysics as a practice,they historiographical should certainlybe consideredalongside both the new applicationsand conceptualextensions of a theory most commonly discussed by historians and the routine calculational work consolidatingtheoreticaltechnologies thathas recently been highlightedby Andrew Warwick's studies of British electrodynamicsin this period. My study does not attemptto define the precise role such histories play but will argue that they provide a form of conceptual orientationintegral to researchpractices and the articulationof meaning in physics. What I mean by this is best conveyed throughconsidering the early accounts I discuss from Walter Kaufmann,Einstein, and Minkowski. In each case the author discusses the physical content of a common set of equations (the in associationwith evaluationsof the significance,achievements, Lorentztransformations) and broaderimplications of recent work from Lorentz and Einstein. Thus, most often relationsbetween the comthroughcontrastand comparison,the authorsassertparticular plex treatmentof equations,calculations,and the like in the originalpapersand meaning.8
7See Warwick, "Cambridge Mathematicsand CavendishPhysics: Pts. 1 and 2" (cit. n. 2). For sociological studies see, e.g., Woolgar, "Writingan IntellectualHistory"(cit. n. 4); and Michael Lynch, Art and Artifact in LaboratoryScience: A Study of Shop Workand Shop Talk in a Research Laboratoty (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985). 8 While it does not play a large role in this essay, a (flexible) distinctionof some kind between practices and meaning or beliefs (here described variously as interpretations, understandings,or readings) is one that has particular point in the case of relativity, where physicists such as Lorentz and Einstein ascribeddifferentinterpretationsto sets of equationsthatwere regardedas formallyequivalentandalso developeddistinctivelydifferent
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Theirjudgments of meaning and significance offer a selective guide throughrecent (and of specific equacontroversial)physics, rangingfrom issues to do with the interpretation tions throughto broad implications (such as whetherrelativity requiresthe existence of the ether). That is, they discuss a spectrumof interrelatedlevels of meaning associated with relativity,raisingjust those questions that historianshave regardedas crucialfor the formationof a clear understanding of the emerging theory and, especially, of the differences between Einstein's and other work. Here I will mostly be concernedwith this interpretativediscussion on its own, but I do regard it as closely related to the research practices it stems from and refers to in differentinstances.9While a centralpartof Kaufmann's discussion is framed solely in terms of a conceptual contrast, the accounts of Einstein and Minkowski give a narrativeand historical cast to the comparisonsat issue the distinctivenatureof researchhistories. All share and will therebyhelp me demonstrate importantfeatures-but also convey somewhatdifferentviews of relativityand its implications: such accountscertainlyserved pedagogicalpurposes,but in additionto recording they helped to shape the landscapethey purportedto represent. histories reflectedand shaped My centralconcern is thereforewith the way participant of the content and implicationsof relativity itself. But they also informed interpretations understandings of its history in importantways. I will arguehere thatEinsteinhimself, in the very first history of relativitypublished,was responsiblefor what has become known as the "myth"of the centralityof the Michelson-Morleyexperimentin the development of relativity and that these participantaccounts disclose a tension between viewing relaof discoverytivity as the productof a communityand sharplyindividualizedattributions a tension that still runs throughpresenthistoriography. In summary,I wish to treatparticipant histories as one among several means of developing a new set of practices and understandings,rather than as either trouble-freeor of present especially privilegedaccountsof the past or as primarilyajustificationor warrant beliefs. I emphasizethathistoricalreasoningmay not simplyjustify presentinterpretations and research techniques but plays a role in their formation and stabilization. Second, investigatingthe changing natureof protagonistaccounts over the first six years of relativity will show a gradualelaborationof the kinds of historical resources deployed and help me to characterizemore closely the differentways that history was used in scientific research.Third, the accounts discussed-from Einstein, Kaufmann,Planck, Minkowski, Bucherer,Lorentz, Sommerfeld, and Laue-will also provide a means of surveying the development of relativity. These sources confirm in outline the narrativeestablishedby
approachesto the solution of problems (thus exhibiting a complex relation between beliefs, formalism, and practices). For an example of one physicist's approachto these issues, discussed below, see Lorentz's 1910 distinction between the "epistemological"and "physical"sides to relativity, in which he regardedhimself as differing from Einstein and Minkowski and as having offered an equivalent system. My use of the terms "in"understanding," and "reading"incorporatesbut is somewhat wider than the epistemological diterpretation," I refer mostly to views on physical content and physical mension Lorentz referredto. With "interpretation" in a broadersense to include also assessments or "reading" implications,while I sometimes use "understanding" of the relationsbetween particularapproachesand other areas of physics such as electron theory and views on the disciplinaryimplicationsof approaches.What I have in mind as practices are more differentiatedsubsets of what Lorentz describes as the "physical"side of relativity, in order to take account of the level of techniques and proceduresat which Lorentzand othersrecognized that,despite a formalequivalence,Lorentz's,Einstein's, and Minkowski's approacheseach involved significantlydifferentways of solving problems. 9 It is clear that historical accounts often reflect specific research concerns of the author. Two examples considered below include the emphasis on a mathematicalpathway in Minkowski's discussions and Planck's 1910 account relating relativity to the principle of least action. In the penultimatesection I also suggest two historical(and conceptual)understandings instances,in the work of Max Laue and Max Born, in which particular of relativityshaped the formationof researchgoals and strategies.
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previous historians, which sees the German physics community as having assimilated relativityby about 1911 after an initial pluralityof approachesand mixed acceptanceand rejection of Einstein's 1905 contribution.10 Nevertheless, by suspendingevaluative comparisons with Einstein's work and following more closely the characterand dynamic interactionsof differentcontributions, the fine-grainedchronologyof my approachwill offer a new perspectiveon this period- one thatreveals unexpectedfeaturesof the relationships between the work of Lorentz,Einstein,and Minkowski(e.g., the fact thatEinsteininitially stressed continuitiesbetween his work and Lorentz's, while Minkowski and Lorentzemphasizeddistinctions).This studytherebyprovidesa means of tracingthe complex process throughwhich in Germanya pluralityof approaches-many relativities with many histories- could become singular-one theory, one history-and throughwhich the work of Einstein came to be sharply distinguished from that of others. It explores a productive tension between individualizedinterpretation voices in the and generalized,representative work of differentphysicists. In addition,the materialdiscussed will drawout pedagogical dimensions of Einstein's scientific work post 1905 that have commonly been neglected in earlier studies. Finally, I suggest that in these writings we see the hitherto-unrecognized sources of historicalaccountsstill currenttoday;these participant accounts,althoughoften brief and histories only in outline, are also proteanin the sense of providing the original instances of a history of relativity.
"THE THEORY OF LORENTZ AND EINSTEIN"
Einstein's 1905 paperitself has often drawncommentfor the paucity of its referencesand While presentinga new approachto electrodynamicsand unitinghis acknowledgments.11 work with the principaloutlines of the electron theory of H. A. Lorentz,Einsteinengages in very little explicit discussion of the relation his work bears either to previous contriof the butions or to alternativeapproaches.The paperpresentsits particular understanding transformationequations Einstein derived (later named the "Lorentz"transformations) primarilythroughoutlining simple empiricalrelationshipsand establishingan instrumental-philosophicaldiscussion of the measurementof time and distance, without explicitly situatingitself within a lineage of theoreticaldevelopment. Thus Einstein implies a historical relation to earlier studies only through general references to a number of sharp contrastswith contemporary theory (in relationto conceptions of inductionand the ether, for example) and a numberof points of concordance(such as statingthe agreementof the
10 It should be remarked that in spite of my observationon the comparativeemphasisplaced on the inception on relativityin Germanyafter 1905; this of Einstein's work, much valuable,detailed work has been undertaken The most importantstudies includeArthur for my own approach. point of departure has constitutedan important (1905-1911) I. Miller,AlbertEinstein's Special Theoryof Relativity:Emergence(1905) and EarlyInterpretation (Reading, Mass.: Addison Wesley, 1981) (hereaftercited as Miller, Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity), and works by Pyenson (see in particularhis "RelativityRevolution" [cit. n. 1]) and Goldberg. For the latter Relativity:Origin authors,in additionto the studies cited in note 1, above, see Stanley Goldberg, Understanding Birkhauser,1984); and Pyenson, YoungEinstein and Impact of a ScientificRevolution(Boston/Basel/Stuttgart: the History of Special (cit. n. 1), more generally. For a helpful review see David C. Cassidy, "Understanding Relativity," Hist. Stud. Phys. Sci., 1986, 16:177-195. For a recent overview see John Stachel, "History of Relativity," in TwentiethCenturyPhysics, Vol. 1, ed. Laurie M. Brown, AbrahamPais, and Brian Pippard York: Instituteof Physics/AmericanInstituteof Physics, 1995), pp. 251-356. (Bristol/Philadelphia/New 1' See, e.g., GeraldHolton's discussion of the voices of differentphysicists embeddedin Einstein's text; these are often representedwithoutbeing named but are neverthelesspartiallyrecognizable:GeraldHolton, "Quanta, Relativity, and Rhetoric,"in Science and Anti-Science (Cambridge,Mass./London:HarvardUniv. Press, 1993), pp. 74-108, on pp. 90-93, esp. pp. 91-92.
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electrodynamicfoundationof Lorentz's theory of the electrodynamicsof moving bodies with the principleof relativity). Perhapspartly in response to this situation, it has been a major concern of historians and philosophersof science to reconstructa history for the paper:to establishthe precise insights or materialEinsteinread,to conjectureas to the most likely sources for particular to distinguishEinstein's approach from the earlier approachesemployed, and, particularly, Because of the cenwork of August Foppl, Ernst Mach, Lorentz, and Henri Poincare.12 trality of the Michelson-Morleyexperimentin participantaccounts discussed here, it is to state at this point thathistoricalstudies of this naturehave takenit as a major important issue to understandwhether Einstein drew on the Michelson-Morleyether-driftexperiment. After considerablecarefulscholarshipinvestigatingthe prehistoryof the 1905 paper and scrutinizingEinstein'stestimonyfrom lateryears,GeraldHoltonestablishedthatwhile Einstein may have known of the experiment in general terms, he was not particularly influencedby it: he had amplereasonsfor doubtingthe existence of an etherwind in 1905. to the Arguing this line quite strongly, historianshave then proposedthat the appearance contrary-that the Michelson-Morleyexperimentwas crucial-has been promotedby the pedagogicalneeds of moderntextbooks.ArthurMiller suggested as a source for this myth a 1913 edition of variousoriginalarticleson relativity,which printedLorentz'sdiscussion of the ether-driftexperimentin conjunctionwith Einstein's 1905 paper.13We might conjecturethatone reasonfor such insistence on the distinctionbetween Einstein's actualpath and the route to relativity often described has been the wish strongly to distinguish the understanding gained throughprofessionalhistory of science from the accounts of physicists, textbooks, and popularhistories of relativity. Throughinvestigating the way contemporariesused the Michelson-Morleyexperimentfrom 1905, ratherthan focusing on the inception of Einstein's work, I will suggest quite a different lineage for the incorporationof the experimentin histories of relativity. Given the paucity of Einstein's explicit references to other work in his 1905 paperand possibly in response to this-it is interesting to note that the first major paper to comment on it did a considerableamountto locate Einstein's work very precisely within
12 Miller's study, Einstein's Special Theoryof Relativity,presentsthe most detailed account of this kind. See of The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein and, in particular,both the editorialnote also the critical apparatus "Einsteinon the Theory of Relativity" and footnotes provided in association with the reprintingof the 1905 paper, in The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, Vol. 2: The Swiss Years: Writings, 1900-1909, ed. John Stachel (Princeton,N.J.: PrincetonUniv. Press, 1989), pp. 253-310. Importantearlier studies include Gerald Holton, ThematicOrigins of Scientific Thought:Kepler to Einstein (Cambridge,Mass.: HarvardUniv. Press, 1988); Stanley Goldberg, "The Lorentz Theory of Electrons and Einstein's Theory of Relativity,"American Journal of Physics, 1969, 35:982-994; Goldberg, "Poincar6'sSilence and Einstein's Relativity: The Role of Theory and Experiment in Poincar6's Physics," British Journal for the History of Science, 1970, 5:73-84; Goldberg,"HenriPoincar6and Einstein's Theory of Relativity,"Hist. Stud. Phys. Sci., 1979, 10:85-121; Tetu Hirosige, "Originsof Lorentz' Theory of Electrons and the Concept of the ElectromagneticField," ibid., 1969, 1:151-209; Hirosige, "The EtherProblem,the MechanisticWorldview, and the Origins of the Theory of Relativity," ibid., 1976, 7:3-82; Russell McCormmach,"H. A. Lorentz and the ElectromagneticView of Nature," Isis, 1970, 61:459-497; and McCormmach,"Einstein,Lorentz,and the ElectronTheory,"Hist. Stud.Phys. Sci., 1970, 2:41-87. Darrigolargues that previous work in this field has been teleologically concernedwith Einstein; Origins of RelativityTheory"(cit. n. 2). see Darrigol,"Electrodynamic 13 See esp. Gerald Holton, "Einstein,Michelson, and the 'Crucial' Experiment," in ThematicOrigins of Scientific Thought,pp. 279-370, and the postscript on pp. 477-480; and Miller, Einstein's Special Theory of Minkowski, Relativity,pp. 391-392, referringto the paperspublishedin H. A. Lorentz,AlbertEinstein,Hermann Eine Sammlungvon Abhandlungen(1913), 7th ed. (Leipzig/Berlin: and HermannWeyl, Das Relativitatsprinzip: Teubner, 1974); this edition has notes by Arnold Sommerfeldand a forewordby Otto Blumenthal.An English version was published as Lorentz,Einstein, Minkowski, and Weyl, The Principle of Relativity,trans.W. Perret and G. B. Jeffrey (New York:Dover, n.d.).
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Kaufmann studies did SOMUCh to shape the (1871-194 7), whose experimental Figure 1. Walter Staats- und earlydevelopmentof electrontheoryand relativity. Courtesyof the Niederscachsische
Universitatsbibliothek, Gottingen.
WalterKaufmann contemporary electrodynamics.Earlyin 1906, the Bonn experimentalist a of his review current theories of (see Figure 1) published lengthy experimentstesting the electron-and announcedthatwhile his resultssupportedthe differenttheoriesof Max Abrahamand Alfred Bucherer,they were not compatible with the Lorentz-Einsteinapproach.Kaufmannalso disagreedwith that approachon theoreticalgroundsbecause it did 14 Nevertheless,in the context of an overnot comply with the electromagneticworldview. view of the history (and cuffent conceptions) of the electron, he outlined the historical evolution of Lorentz's theory with some care and discussed its relationto Einstein's more
14 Walter Kaufmann,"Oberdie Konstitutiondes Elektrons," Ann. Phys., 1906, 19:487-553; and Kaufmann, "Nachtragzu der Abhandlungen: Uber die Konstitutiondes Elektrons,"ibid., 20:639-640. Kaufmanncited Max Abraham'sargumentthat Lorentz's theory requiredthe assumptionof a nonelectromagneticinternalpotential energy in orderto comply with the energy law; see Kaufmann,"Konstitution des Elektrons,"pp. 493-494. For a detaileddiscussion of Kaufmann'sexperimentsand the way in which Poincard,Einstein,andLorentzresponded to them see Giora Hon, "Is the Identificationof ExperimentalErrorContextually Dependent? The Case of Kaufmann' s Experimentand Its VariedReception,"in ScientificPractice: Theoriesand Storiesof Doing Physics, ed. Jed Z. Buchwald (Chicago/London:Univ. Chicago Press, 1995), pp. 170-223.
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recent contribution.Kaufmannpointed out that Lorentz's 1895 electron theory had expected an influence of the second order from the earth's motion on certain optical and electromagneticphenomena(that is, of v21c2,where v and c are equal to the velocity of the earthand of light, respectively) but that all experimentsto confirmsuch an influence had yielded a negative result. (Here Kaufmanndid not cite any specific experimentbut referredto discussions in Lorentz's papers.) He reportedthat Lorentz's important1904 paper,"OnElectromagnetic Phenomenain a System Moving with Any Velocity Less Than That of Light," had then attemptedto cope with these difficulties by modifying certain fundamentalassumptionsabout the electron and the molecularforces operatingbetween materialparticles. In Lorentz's new electrodynamics,"absolutevelocities" appearedas factorsin calculationswhile the final resultdependedonly on directlyobservable"relative velocities" (a feature Kaufmannthought raised epistemological difficulties); and the dimensionsof all physicalbodies, includingtheirparticular molecules andelectrons,changed in a definite way with velocity. Further,molecularforces and the "masses"of mechanics changed in just the same way with velocity as electrostaticforces and the electromagnetic mass. Kaufmanndescribed Einstein as having arrivedat equivalent formulationsby the quite differentapproachof puttingthe principleof relativityat the summitof physics. He explained that Einstein's approachinvolved a new definition of time and of the concept of simultaneityfor spatiallyseparated formallyidenpoints,which involved considerations tical with the "local time" introducedby Lorentz. While Lorentz's approachcould not exclude the possibility of achieving the requisiteresults by other means, Einstein showed thatthe kinematicsof the rigid body and Lorentzianelectrodynamicsfollowed necessarily from according a central role to the principle of relative motion.15 Thus Kaufmannpresented Einstein's work as being formally and observationallyequivalentbut conceptually quite distinct from that of Lorentz. The considerable interpretativework he undertook of the relationshows that Kaufmannfelt it necessary to provide a closer characterization ship between Einstein'spaperandcontemporary theorythanEinsteinhad given, especially in regardto a study Einstein himself had not considered (or indeed read at that time) Lorentz's 1904 paper.16 Kaufmann'sarticleon electrontheory-a researchfield then at the forefrontof concern, for the promise it held for the widely supportedelectromagneticview of naparticularly ture-attracted a greatdeal of attentionand sparkedvociferouspublic debatein thejournals and conference halls of Germany.17 It was thereforeextremely importantfor the fortunes
15 Kaufmann, pp. 490-491 (quotation),491-493. He is discussingH. A. Lorentz, des Elektrons," "Konstitution Phenomenain a System Moving with Any Velocity Less ThanThatof Light,"Koninklijke "OnElectromagnetic te Amsterdam:Section of Sciences: Proceedings, 1904, 6:809-831 (a reprintin Akademievan Wetenschappen translationof a paperpublishedin Dutch). 16 The themes of equivalence and conceptual distinction would both be importantin later discussions of relativity,in common with other episodes in the history of science and mathematics.See, e.g., Skuli Sigurdsson, "Equivalence,PragmaticPlatonism, and Discovery of Calculus,"in Inventionof Physical Science, ed. Nye et al. (cit. n. 4), pp. 97-116. A footnote added to the reprintof Einstein's "On the Electrodynamicsof Moving (cit. n. 13), p. 26 n 2, states that this work was not known to Bodies," in Lorentz et al., Relativitdtsprinzip makes the restriction Einstein before he wrote the 1905 paper. The importanceof Lorentz's paper in particular of this study to works publishedafter 1905 somewhat artificial.However, it will suffice to observe thatLorentz experiments began this paperwith a discussion of the Michelson-MorleyandTrouton-Noble(1903) second-order and thathe builds his argumentby enteringinto explicit dialogue with the earlierwork of a numberof physicists and mathematicians,including his own and that of Poincare. In this sense its presentationis far more clearly historicalin naturethan that of Einstein's 1905 paper. 17 See the references cited in note 12, above, for discussions of the place of electron theory and the electromagnetic worldview in contemporaryphysics. See Hon, "Identificationof Error?"(cit. n. 14); and Holton, "Quanta,Relativity, and Rhetoric"(cit. n. 11), pp. 94-100, for examples of discussions of the reception of Kaufmann'sexperiment.
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of relativity that in two papers, one of which was presentedto the Annual Congress of in Stuttgartin German Natural Scientists and Physicians (Naturforscherversammlung) 1906, Max Planck counteredKaufmann'sexperimentalobjections by openly supporting Einstein's approachand arguingthat the experimentswere not sufficientlyprecise to distinguish between the differentelectron theories on offer. Enthusiasticbut caughtbetween appreciationand a wish for caution, Planck wrote of relativity as a physical idea of the greatestsimplicity and generalitythat deserved to be discussed from many points of view and tested to the limit of the ad absurdumto see whether it would withstand serious to relativscrutiny.In additionto discussing the basic equationsof mechanics appropriate ity, Planck went into exhaustive detail in a critical study of Kaufmann'sexperiment,but he did not go as far as Kaufmannhad in analyzing the relationshipbetween Lorentzand Einstein-rather, he simply described the principle of relativity as having been recently introducedby Lorentzand, in a still more generalversion, by Einstein.'8 Planck and otherphysicists were soon to collapse this descriptioneven furtherandrefer to the Lorentz-Einsteintheory, the first (potential) protohistoryI wish to discuss. Many historiansof science have notedthis conjunctionof names,takingit as extremelyimportant evidence of physicists' attitudestoward relativity. Russell McCormmachcomments, for example, "Forseveralyears after 1905 physicists seldom distinguishedbetweenEinstein's and Lorentz's formulationsof the electron theory. They referredinterchangeablyto the and the relativitytheories."Similarly,GeraldHolton has 'Lorentz,'the 'Lorentz-Einstein' writtenthat"basicdifferencesin the underlyingworldpictures[of Lorentz'sandEinstein's work] were slow to be recognised and the long persistenceof the term 'Lorentz-Einstein' was an indicatorof it."'9 Thus historians(taking an inception/reception approachto the study of relativity)have of the use of these terms as indicating a misunderstanding regardedthe interchangeable essential natureof Einstein's work, a lack of appreciationof the full distinctionsbetween Lorentz's dynamical theory and the kinematic natureof Einstein's approach.While it is certainlyimportantto take the way physicists refer to theories seriously, there are several reasons for exercising caution in interpretingthis conjunction of two names. The first, general reason is that without more informationabout the way a physicist worked with of his attitude is highly underdetermined. Certainly relativity, any single interpretation those using such references were not primarilyconcerned with delineating distinctions, and this may be the most importantpoint behind historians' discussions of the practice. mistakenlyheld However, while the use of these terms could indicatethatcontemporaries the work of Lorentz and Einstein to be basically similar, it could equally well reflect a numberof other possible positions (which are not mutuallyexclusive). For example, the conjunctionmight be used in a primarilyhistoricalsense or to stress the perceived formal and observationalequivalence of the two approaches,or it could reflect (albeit only sche18 der Max Planck, "Das Prinzip der Relativitatund die Grundgleichungender Mechanik,"Verhandlungen Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft, 1906, 8:136-141, esp. pp. 136, 137; and Planck, "Die Kaufmannschen Physikalische in ihrenBedeutungfur die DynamikderElektronen," der f3-Strahlen Messungender Ablenkbarkeit is reZeitschrift, 1906, 7:753-761 (the discussion following Planck's paper to the Naturforscherversammlung ported on pp. 759-761). For Planck's reasons for accepting relativity, and his role in the development of the theory more generally, see the essays by Goldbergand Pyenson cited in note 1, above. For his philosophy and disciplinaryrole in Germanysee J. L. Heilbron, The Dilemmas of an UprightMan: Max Planck as Spokesman for GermanScience (Berkeley:Univ. CaliforniaPress, 1986). 19 View of Nature"(cit. n. 12), p. 489; and Holton, "Quanta, McCormmach,"Lorentzand the Electromagnetic Relativity, and Rhetoric"(cit. n. 11), p. 93.
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matically) the fact that a physicist actually endorsed a mixture of the approachof both physicists.20 reference.He initially did so in response ConsiderPlanck's use of such an abbreviated to Kaufmann'sdiscussion. In the context of his critical studies, Planck's silence on the detailed relationshipbetween Lorentz and Einstein could be taken to imply his assent to the conceptual distinctions-and observationalequivalence-Kaufmann had identified. This is an instance where it might be profitableto recognize the natureof a physicist's discourse as a contributionwithin the archive of an ongoing dialogue, written with an awarenessof relationshipsto othercontributions. But thereare also reasonsto believe that while Planckappreciated the simplicityand generalityof Einstein's approach, he may have been wary of some of the implicationsEinstein drew-and hence of endorsinghis work wholly or exclusively at this early stage.2'We know that shortlyafterthis time Planck saw electron theory and an investigation of the relationshipbetween the ether and matter(in the context of the absorptionand emission of radiationwithin the black-body)to hold the most fruitfulprospects for researchin quantumtheory, an attitudereflected in his correspondencewith Einstein, Paul Ehrenfest,and Lorentzand on which Planck's views were in conflict with Einstein's emerging publications.22 In 1909 Planck argued strongly and publicly againstEinstein's suggestion of applyingquantumtheory to light itself, advocating instead that the applicationof energy quantizationbe restrictedto the oscillating resonatorsof his black-bodytheory, without giving up Maxwell's equationsin the way Einstein advocated.23 Einstein'swork Holdingviews of this kind, Planckmay have understood on relativityquite clearly in 1906 but not accepted or been uneasy with his explicit disavowal of the ether as carrierof the electromagneticforces. ThereforePlanck's references to both Lorentz and Einstein could reflect a consciously selective approach,endorsinga mixtureof differentfeaturesof the work of each. In supportof this possibility, it is worth noting thatwhile others(such as Max Laue, JakobLaub,and AlfredBucherer)commented favorably on the implications Einstein drew against the ether, Planck did not raise this topic in his early papers.Further,in the very letter to Einstein in which Planck discussed the substantialdifferences in their approachto quantumtheory, he also statedhis opinion that at a time when the supportersof relativity were few in number it was extremely importantfor them to be in agreementwith each other. This view might have led him to
20 Darrigol suggests the possibility that Germanphysicists took a selective ("active, filtering")approachin Origins of Relativity Theory"(cit. n. 2), pp. 311-312. The their readingof Einstein's work in "Electrodynamic Mathematicsand Cavendish point has been strongly arguedin regardto British work in Warwick, "Cambridge Physics: Pts. 1 and 2" (cit. n. 2), and in relation to Germanphysics between 1905 and 1914 in Staley, "Born and the GermanPhysics Community"(cit. n. 2). 21 Note that in 1908 Planck referredto "Einstein'stheory of relativity" in the singular:Max Planck, "Bemerkungen zum Prinzipder Aktion und Reaktionder allgemeinen Dynamik,"Verhand.Deut. Phys. Gesell., 1908, 10:728-732, on p. 729. But see my discussion of the inclusive natureof his 1910 historicalaccountof relativity, below. 22 For Planck's correspondence with Einstein on this issue see Max Planck to AlbertEinstein, 6 July 1907, in The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, Vol. 5: The Swiss Years: Correspondence,1902-1914, ed. MartinJ. Klein, A. J. Kox, and RobertSchulmann(Princeton,N.J.: PrincetonUniv. Press, 1993) (hereaftercited as Einstein, Collected Papers of Einstein, Vol. 5, ed. Klein et al.), pp. 49-50. This letter is quoted in more detail below (see note 40). On the correspondencebetween Planck and Ehrenfestsee Thomas S. Kuhn, Black-Body Theoryand the Quantum Discontinuity,1894-1912 (Chicago:Univ. Chicago Press, 1987), pp. 131-134; on that between Planck and Lorentz see Goldberg, "Planck's Philosophy of Nature"(cit. n. 1), pp. 155-157. On the connections between views on quantumtheory, the theory of the electron, and relativity see Staley, "Bornand the GermanPhysics Community"(cit. n. 2), pp. 161-162, 217-221. 23 Planck repeated substantially the same views outlined in his letter of 6 July 1907 in the public discussion following Albert Einstein, "Uberdie EntwicklungunsererAnschauungenuber das Wesen und die Konstitution der Strahlung," Phys. Z., 1909, 10:817-826, on p. 825.
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silence or to express only implicitly his own differences from Einstein in regardto the broaderimplicationsof relativity. These considerationsunderlinethe cautionrequiredin interpreting the use of such brief references-which could reflect a range of judgmentsabout the conceptualand historical relationsbetween the work in question.However, there is a more specific reason to question whetherthe close conjunctionof Lorentz's and Einstein's names necessarilyindicates a basic misunderstanding of Einstein-for Einstein himself employs just this association. From 1905 Einstein developed relativityboth theoretically(exploring in particular the extremely general relationhe soon identifiedbetween inertialmass and energy) and with an eye towardexperiment,proposingtwo experimentsthatmight be capableof testing his work. One exploited a new arrangement to determinethe ratiobetween the transverseand longitudinalmass of the electron;the otherproposedthat the line spectraof canal rays be consideredas a fast-moving clock. With these papersEinstein addressedconcernscentral to experimentalists such as Kaufmann, Bucherer,andAdolf Bestelmeyer,who were deeply engaged in investigatingthe differentelectrontheories.If Einsteinhad felt misrepresented or misunderstoodby those who linked his work with Lorentz's, he could have sought to correcttheirviews in this forum.In neithercase, however, nor even in discussing electron theory, did Einsteindrawany explicit distinctionbetween his work and Lorentz's. Rather, in the first of these papers he comparedwithout furthercomment the values for the ratio of transverseto longitudinalmass predictedby the theories of Buchererand of Abraham and "thetheory of Lorentz and Einstein."24 Regardingboth the use of the singularand of Einstein's own name in this text as being "quiteuncharacteristic," GeraldHolton has suggested that "for this brief piece only, Einstein adopted or aped Kaufmann's terminology, and probably did so with tongue in cheek."25 However, there are independentreasons for thinking that Einstein was actually quite happy-at least initially-for his work to be closely associated with Lorentz's and that the lack of an explicit distinction, except in regard to the ether, was in fact quite general in Einstein's writing at this time.
EINSTEIN'S HISTORY
In 1907 the experimentalistJohannes Stark asked Einstein (see Figure 2) to preparea survey articleon relativityfor his journal,the Jahrbuchder Radioaktivitat undElektronik. The invitationitself indicates that despite its uncertainstatusrelativity(and Einstein)had attractedsignificantattention;it may also have reflectedStark'sinterestin Einstein's controversialviews on quantumtheory. It gave Einstein (ratherthan, say, Lorentzor Planck) the extremelyvaluableopportunity of summarizing the achievementsof relativity,andthat task also brought several papers to his attentionfor the first time, among them Planck's detailedrebuttalof Kaufmann'sfindings.26 The articlenow drawscommentprincipallyfor
24 AlbertEinstein, "Cbereine Methodezur Bestimmungdes Verhaltnissesder transversalen undlongitudinalen Masse des Elektrons,"Ann. Phys., 1906, 21:583-586, on p. 586; and Einstein, "Uber die Moglichkeit einer neuen Pruifung des Relativitiitsprinzips," ibid., 1907, 23:197-198. 25Holton,"Quanta,Relativity, and Rhetoric"(cit. n. 11), pp. 107-108 n 49. 26 Stark was one of the few physicists to take Einstein's work on quantumtheory seriously at this time, publishingin December 1907 a paperin which the quantumhypothesis was used to explain the Doppler effect of light emitted by canal rays. See the correspondencebetween Starkand Einstein regardingthe survey article, which indicates that at the time he accepted the task Einstein knew of Lorentz's 1904 paper, papers by Emil Cohn and Kurdvon Mosengeil, and two of Planck's publications-but of no other theoreticalworks relatedto the subject:Einstein to JohannesStark,25 Sept. 1907, and Starkto Einstein, 4 Oct. 1907, in Collected Papers of Einstein, Vol. 5, ed. Klein et al., pp. 74-75, 76.
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the attitudeEinstein reveals to Kaufmann'sexperiments and for the major new insight developed in its concluding sections-Einstein's firstextension of relativityto encompass gravitation.But for many contemporaries this paperis likely to have providedan approach with to relativitycomparablein importanceto the original 1905 paper.In correspondence Stark, Einstein stated that he had written in such a way that readers could familiarize themselves with relativityand its applications"relativelyeasily." He indicatedthathe took "greatcare in explaining the assumptionsused," introducingthem one by one and tracing their consequencesin the same order,ascribingmore importanceto the "intuitivenessand simplicityof the mathematical developmentsthanto the unity of presentation."27 Indicating a particularkind of pedagogical care, these comments may also represent an implicit comparisonwith the style in which Einsteinhad presentedhis workin 1905, whereperhaps he strove after "unityof presentation." In additionto paying close pedagogical attentionto the assumptionsemployed, Einstein began his 1907 paperby giving relativitya history.This discussion has drawnsurprisingly little attentionfrom laterhistoriansof science,28 althoughwe shall see some evidence that read and utilized Einstein's account. contemporaries Einstein opened by presenting the transformationequations that preserve Newton's equations of motion under a uniform translation,referringto this independencefrom the state of motion of the system of coordinatesused as "theprinciple of relativity."He then wrote that these transformation equationshad suddenly seemed to have been called into question by the brilliant confirmationsof Lorentz's electrodynamicsof moving bodies, whose basic equations were not preservedunder them. Lorentz's theory itself, however, had had to be modified, throughthe introductionof the contractionhypothesis,in orderto accommodatethe negative resultof the Michelson-Morleyexperiment.Einsteinwrotethat this ad hoc hypothesis seemed to be only an artificialmeans of saving the theory and that it therefore seemed as if Lorentz's theory should be abandoned,to be replaced by one whose foundationscorrespondedto the principle of relativity. "Surprisingly, however, it turned out that a sufficiently sharpenedconception of time was all that was needed to overcome the difficulty discussed."It only needed to be recognized that Lorentz's "local time" could be defined as "time"in general-the Lorentz-Fitzgerald hypothesis then appearedas a compelling consequenceof the theory,and only the conceptof the luminiferous etheras the carrierof the electric and magneticforces failed to fit into the theorydescribed.
27 Einstein to Stark, 1 Nov. 1907, ibid., pp. 77-78. (Here and elsewhere, all translationsinto English are mine und die aus demunless otherwise indicated.)The paper itself is Albert Einstein, "Uberdas Relativitaitsprinzip und Elektronik,1907, 4:411-462. For Einstein's selben gezogenen Folgerungen,"Jahrbuchdie Radioaktivitdt correspondencerelating to requests for reprints of or comments on this paper see, e.g., Einstein to Arnold Sommerfeld,5 Jan. 1908; JakobLaub to Einstein, 2 Feb. 1908; ArthurSchoenflies to Einstein, 15 Jan. 1909 (in wish to have his own copies of Einstein's papers,especially which Schoenflies indicates that he had a particular this one); and George Searle to Einstein, 20 May 1909 (thankingEinstein for sending a copy of his paper on the principle of relativity at the request of Bucherer),in Collected Papers of Einstein, Vol. 5, ed. Klein et al., pp. 85-86, 94-95, 153, 190-191. 28 In his study of Einsteinand Michelson, Holton refersto this paperbut does not considerit in detail,regarding the accountEinstein gives as implicit history, in contrastto the explicit histories he uses (togetherwith evidence from the prehistoryto the 1905 paper)to evaluate whetherthe Michelson-Morleyexperimentwas importantin the genesis of relativity.See Holton, "Einstein,Michelson, and the 'Crucial'Experiment" (cit. n. 13), p. 352 n 29. It seems to be the fact that the account is followed by a researchreview (in which Einstein's concern is to draw the results of previous studies into a coherent whole) that leads Holton to describe it as implicit history. This feature increases its interest for my study of the relations between history and researchand, in my view, does little to diminish its importanceas a history. I also differ from Holton in that I regardEinstein's discussion as an explicit history of Lorentz's theory and the principleof relativity,which also gives (in a numberof brief and ambiguousphrases) some implicit indicationsof Einstein's own role and the path he took to relativity.
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Finally, Einstein concluded this historicalintroductionby describinghis review articleas "an attemptto summarizethe studies which have resulted to date from the union of the H. A. Lorentztheory and the principleof relativity."29 There are a numberof things worthy of note here, and a comparisonwith Kaufmann's account discloses particularcharacteristicsof Einstein's discussion. First, at this stage Einstein's presentationstresses similarities between his work and Lorentz's ratherthan differences-and perhapsmore stronglythanKaufmann'spaper,with its discussion of the epistemological difficulties Einstein's approachavoided. Given both the recognized success of Lorentz'stheory (particularlyin regardto opticalphenomena,thoughnot in regard to the mass/velocity relations of electron theory) and Lorentz's status within the physics community, it should not be surprisingthat the young Einstein was ready to encourage perceptionsof the links between his work and that of Lorentz. Further,the relationshipEinstein depicts is not only one of conceptualsimilarity,but a s paperhad pointed out a conceptualrelationgenetic one. For example, while Kaufmann' by Lorentz,andEinstein's relativity,in Einstein's ship between "localtime,"as formulated causalelementin the developmentof the new approach: accountthis becomes an important "it only needed to be recognized ... It is differencesof this naturethatmake Einstein's account quite emphaticallya history ratherthan simply a descriptiveaccount of the conceptualrelationsbetween two differentversions of one approach,as Kaufmannhad it. The historicalmode allows Einsteinto suggest a close and genetic relationshipand also clearly implies that the second formulationis not only subsequentbut actually superior,a development of the first: Einstein pictures the Lorentz theory being united with the relativity principleto form a higher, single theory. Notice, too, that beginning with a discussion of equations, Einstein casts the what soon came to be called the-Galileian transformation history of Lorentz's theory in relationto the principleof relativity:the principlehad been challenged by Lorentz's theory; the theory might have to be abandonedin favor of one equations show its comaccording with the principle;but finally the new transformation patibility with the principle. This constitutes a retelling of the developmentof Lorentz's theory in the light of Einstein's own emphasis on the principleof relativity-just as Peter from the Galison has shown that Maxwell's equationshave been rereador reinterpreted vantageof successive theoreticalperspectivessuch as relativityand grandunifiedtheories. Poincarehad previously discussed the relationshipbetween Lorentz'stheory and the principle of relativity (and interpretedLorentz's local time as the apparenttime for moving observers),and he is perhapsthe only physicist apartfrom Einstein who could have given a reading of the developmentof Lorentz's approachsimilar in kind-though he was particularly concerned with the relationshipbetween Lorentz's theory and a group of principles, especially the principleof reaction.(Indeed,the centralityof Poincare'sinteractions in relativitymakehis absence with Lorentzandhis earlyformulationof concepts important from Einstein's and many other German accounts a somewhat puzzling and interesting omission.)31 In contrast to Einstein's retelling, Kaufmann'sbrief account had depicted Lorentz's theory as evolving in response to empiricalchallenges alone.
29 (cit. n. 27), pp. 411-412, 413. His initial references are to H. A. Einstein, "Oberdas Relativitatsprinzip" Lorentz, Versucheiner Theorieder elektrischenund optischenErscheinungenin bewegtenKdrpern(1895; rpt., Leipzig, 1906). Einstein cited Lorentz's 1904 paperand his own work as foundationsfor his 1907 treatment. HilfsgrilBe,welche er 'Ortszeit' 30 "Esbedurftenur der Erkenntnis, daBman eine von H. A. Lorentzengefuihrte p. 413. nannte,als 'Zeit' schlechthindefinierenkann":Einstein, "Oberdas Relativitaitsprinzip," II Galison, "Re-reading the Past"(cit. n. 5). See Darrigol'sdiscussion of the principleof relativityin Poincare's work in "Poincare's Criticism of Fin-de-Siecle Electrodynamics"(cit. n. 2), pp. 16-17. For a discussion of
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In describing these empirical challenges in 1907, Einstein was preparedto be more colorful (borrowingthe language of "ad hoc" change that both Poincareand Lorentzhad used to describe the characterof Lorentz's responses) and more specific. In contrastto both his own generalreferenceto the failureof unspecifiedattemptsto measurethe velocity of the earthrelative to the ether in 1905 and Kaufmann'sfootnote referringto Lorentz's discussions, in 1907 Einstein assigns the Michelson-Morley experiment-by name-a centralplace in the developmentof the theory.32 Given that Einstein framed his discussion in terms of a theoreticalprinciple, it would be an overstatement to see this referenceas subsumingthe story in the kind of "empiricist" repertoireG. Nigel Gilbert and Michael Mulkay have identified as a major genre in participantaccounts of the historicaldevelopmentof researchareas.Indeed, the emphasison the centralrole of theoreticalinsight common in participants'and historians'accountsof relativity, quantumtheory, and, especially, Einstein's approachto physics could well license the recognition of a "theoreticist" repertoirein which theoreticalinsight initiates a decisive resolutionor essentially clarifiesa choice between differentinterpretations, where experiment is depicted as having no clear import or even apparentlyspeaks against the insight concerned.33 Nevertheless,Einstein's 1907 referenceclearly drawson an empiricist genre and constitutesonly the first of many occasions on which an account of the history of relativity-incorporating the early development of Lorentz's theory-was to do so. Further, Einstein's accountis a more likely originalsourcefor the view thatthe MichelsonMorley experiment was a prerequisitefor his publication on special relativity than the particularconjunctionof paperspublished in the 1913 collection of importantarticles on relativity, The Principle of Relativity.Edited by the mathematician Otto Blumenthal,with additionalcomments from Arnold Sommerfeld, that publication could well have drawn on Einstein's 1907 narrativeitself.34
Minkowski's omission of any reference to Poincare in his "Space and Time" lecture see Scott Walter, "Minkowski, Mathematicians,and the MathematicalTheory of Relativity," in The Expanding Worlds of General Relativity,ed. HubertGoenner,JiirgenRenn, Jim Ritter, and Tilman Sauer (Einstein Studies, 7) (Boston: Birkhauser,forthcoming). 32 Einstein, "Ober das Relativitaitsprinzip" (cit. n. 27), pp. 412-413. JohnStacheldiscusses Einstein'sreference to the Michelson-Morleyexperimentin the context of justificationin orderto surmise its role in the context of discovery, pointing out that the experimentwas commonly cited as evidence for the principle of relativity (not the principle of the constancy of the velocity of light) and arguing that once Einstein took the principle of relativity to be valid for all phenomena(and particularlyelectrodynamicand not just mechanicalphenomena), it was a reformulation of the concept of time that enabled him to see a way of squaringthe principle with all of electrodynamics.This accountof Einstein's own path accordswell with the temporalorderof his 1907 historical overview. See JohnStachel,"EinsteinandMichelson:The Contextof Discovery andthe Contextof Justification," AstronomischeNachrichten, 1982, 303:47-53. 33 Gilbert and Mulkay contrast empiricist genres locating the driving force of scientific change in the compelling findings of specific experimentswith contingent repertoires,which focus on social and personal bases for scientific action and belief. See Gilbert and Mulkay, "ExperimentsAre the Key" (cit. n. 4). For a sensitive study of Einstein's relation to experimentthat argues against the theoreticist orientationcommon to many accounts see Klaus Hentschel, "Einstein'sAttitudetowardsExperiments:Testing RelativityTheory, 1907-1927," Stud.Hist. Phil. Sci., 1992, 23:593-624. In a study of Einstein's changingphilosophicalorientation,Holton cites Einstein's discussion of Kaufmann'sexperimentin the 1907 paper (see below) as early evidence of Einstein's of his initial approachto physics, on hardeningagainst the epistemological priorityof experimentcharacteristic a journey towarda rationalrealismfor which his experiencein the developmentof generalrelativitywas central. See GeraldHolton, "Mach,Einstein, and the Search for Reality,"in ThematicOrigins of ScientificThought(cit. n. 12), pp. 237-277 (on Kaufmannsee pp. 252-254). 34 Lorentz et al., Relativititsprinzip (cit. n. 13). The chronology of development suggested by the extracts reflects the importanceof the Michelson-Morley experiment as portrayedby Einstein's narrative,while the editorialfootnotes (addedwith the consultationof the differentauthorsconcerned,with Sommerfeldresponsible for those on Minkowski's "Spaceand Time"lecture)reflect a view of the relationsbetween the work of Lorentz,
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If other historiansare correct in their view that Einstein in fact owed little to the Michelson-Morley experimentin the formulationof relativity, we have to ask what he is doing citing it. There are good reasons, of a pedagogical and justificatory nature, for Einstein to have constructeda route throughworks centralto those concernedwith electrodynamicsratherthanbasing his discussion solely on the more individualisticoutline of his own path.Most physicists would have recognizedthis aspectof his story as an accurate descriptionof a majorpoint in the developmentof Lorentz's theory, while the discussion of that theory in relation to the principleof relativity would have been less familiar(and is more indicativeof the course of Einstein's own theoreticalreflections).In addition,since the important experimentson the electronthen told againstrelativity,it would have seemed especially importantfor Einstein to emphasize whateverpositive links existed with other, well-recognized experiments.Lorentz's explanationof Michelson-Morleywas known to be a significant success, one that Planck in 1907 wrote was still regarded as the only experimentalsupportfor relativity. The centralityEinstein accordedthe experiment,and the fact that he placed great significance on its value for (at the very least) enhancingthe perceptionof relativity,is confirmedvery clearly in a revealing letter he wrote to Arnold Sommerfeldin 1908. There Einstein suggested that "if the Michelson-Morleyexperiment had not broughtus into the greatestpredicament,no one would have perceived the theory of relativityas a (half) salvation."35 Einstein's letter is interestingon a numberof other counts also. First, it indicates that by this stage Einsteinhad received significantpersonalrecognition,at least throughprivate correspondence.Sommerfeld (who we know was persuadedof relativity throughMinkowski's work somewhatlater)had evidentlywrittento Einsteinin a highly complimentary manner.Einstein replied in a self-consciously personal vein that "in consequence of my fortunateinspirationto have introducedthe principle of relativity into physics, you (and others)overestimatemy scientificcapabilitiesextraordinarily." Perhapsone of the "others" Einstein was thinking of was Max Laue, who had dedicated a reprintof his 1907 paper on optics "Tothe discovererof the relativityprinciple"in sendingit to Einstein.36 However, Sommerfeldhadnot limitedhis remarksto complimentsbut also raisedimportant questions about the scope of the theory;Einstein's reply went on to take up the issue of whetherhe saw relativity's treatmentof (for example) the mechanics of the electron to be definitive. Here Einstein stated emphaticallythat this was not the case and insisted that (as Sommerfeld suggested) a satisfactoryphysical theory requireda more elementaryfoundation
Einstein, and Minkowskithat we will see emerges stronglyin Germanyonly afterabout 1910-1911. In addition to the evidence of readershipof this paper in particulardiscussed in note 27, above, I have only indirect evidence-persuasive, but not conclusive-for the significanceof Einstein's accountfor later historiesof relativity. By 1913 there were numerous sources stressing the importanceof the Michelson-Morley experiment in the formationof relativity, including in particularthe accounts of Laub and Laue-physicists who were certainly well aware of Einstein's 1907 paper-referred to below. 35 Max Planck, "Zur Dynamik bewegter Systeme," Konigliche Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin): Sitzungsberichte,1907, 29:542-570, on p. 546; and Einsteinto Sommerfeld,14 Jan. 1908, in Collected Papers of Einstein, Vol. 5, ed. Klein et al., pp. 86-89. In 1910 Lorentz arguedthat the negative result could be explained only by the principleof relativity:H. A. Lorentz,"Alte und neue Fragender Physik,"Phys. Z., 1910, 11:1234-1257, on p. 1244. 36 Einstein to Sommerfeld, 14 Jan. 1908, pp. 86-87. See also Einstein, Collected Papers of Einstein, Vol. 5, ed. Klein et al., p. 485 n 10. The paper Laue sent Einstein was Max Laue, "Die Mitfiihrungdes Lichtes durch Ann. Phys., 1907, 23:989-990. In a similar vein, shortly after bewegte Korpernach dem Relativitaitsprinzip," writing to SommerfeldEinstein received a letter in which Jakob Laub stated that he concernedhimself greatly with the "relativityphysics" Einstein had introduced:Laub to Einstein, 2 Feb. 1908, in Collected Papers of Einstein, Vol. 5, ed. Klein et al., pp. 94-95. The phrase "relativityphysics" usefully points to Einstein's introduction of a way of working theoretically,not just a principle.
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for its structure; he went on to comparerelativitywith classical thermodynamics at a stage before Ludwig Boltzmann had interpretedentropy as probability.37 This belief explains Einstein's descriptionof relativity as only a half salvation-and just as Sommerfeldand Einstein were aware of limitations,we should recognize that other physicists' attitudesto relativity (whether acceptance, suspension of judgment, or rejection) were importantly shaped by perceptions of its limitations. In this respect it is particularlyrevealing that Sommerfeldhad questionedEinsteinspecificallyin regardto the relationbetweenrelativity and electrontheory.In associationwith the electromagneticview of nature,electrontheory formed the context for many early reactions to Einstein's work; it was a field in which many physicists expected to see significantprogressbut were unsureof the precise implications to be drawn from Einstein's formulations.38 Finally, Einstein's language in both this letter and his 1907 paper reveals the importanceof a generalized voice for much of his writing on relativity and its history. Einstein is certainlyready to step into an individualized and personal account, whether implicitly, as in his 1907 discussion of time, or explicitly, as in the way he acknowledgeshis inspirationto Sommerfeld.Nevertheless,as his use of the pronoun "us" when referringto the crisis occasioned by the MichelsonMorley experimentindicates, Einstein often chooses to write from a perspective that incorporatesbut is not limited to his own; he writes to representthe perspective of a community. This generalized voice is at least as powerful and importantto the authoras his own. Einstein refrainedfrom referringto Kaufmann'sdamaging experimentalresults in the opening section of his review article:rather,there his referencesto Newtonian theoryand the Michelson-Morleyexperimentmake a comparisonwith the past seem more significant in evaluatingrelativitythana comparisonwith contemporary rivals. Nevertheless,Einstein discussed Kaufmann'sresultslaterin the paper.After suggestingthatwhetherKaufmann's findings or the foundationsof relativitywere in errorcould be decided only when a great variety of observationalmaterialwas at hand, Einstein stated-in a passage often recalled by historiansfor the strengthand certaintyof its theoreticistconvictions-that rival electrontheories"shouldbe ascribeda rathersmall probabilitybecause theirbasic assumptions about the mass of moving electrons are not made plausible by theoretical systems that encompassa wider complex of phenomena."39 Despite the impressionsometimesconveyed by theoreticistdiscussions, both Einstein's several attemptsto suggest other experiments capable of testing relativity and his willingness to draw on Michelson-Morley in this history indicate that he was by no means indifferentto experimentalconfirmation. In additionto its historicaldiscussion, Einstein's 1907 paperis a valuable resourcefor
37 Einstein to Sommerfeld, 14 Jan. 1908, p. 87. These views were followed by Einstein's statementon the importanceof the Michelson-Morleyexperiment. 38 See, e.g., the exchange between Einstein and Ehrenfest on this point: Paul Ehrenfest, "Die Translation deformierbarer Elektronenund der Flachensatz," Ann. Phys., 1907, 23:204; and Albert Einstein, "Bemerkungen zu der Notiz von Hm. Paul Ehrenfest:'Die Translationdeformierbarer Elektronenund der Flachensatz,'" ibid., pp. 206-208. These papers are discussed in detail in RichardStaley, "Relativity,Rigidity, and Rotation"(unpublished MS). Einstein wrote that the two principles of relativity and the constancy of the velocity of light should not be conceived as a system and in themselves only make statementsabout rigid bodies, clocks, and light signals. Relativity theory only provided additional statementsby requiringrelations between otherwise seemingly unrelatedlaws. Further informationon the motionof the electronin relativitycould be attainedwithout arbitrariness only if the dynamics of the rigid body were known with sufficient accuracy, a goal that lay far ahead. Sommerfeld'squery may be taken to imply thatEinstein's publishedanswer and other work on the topic had not satisfied him (and my unpublishedpaper draws on manuscriptsources to argue that it had also not satisfiedEhrenfest). 39Einstein, "'Uber das Relativitatsprinzip" (cit. n. 27), p. 439.
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the historianfor just the reasonit would have been important for contemporaries: it reveals the state of researchon relativityat the time extremelyclearly. In doing so it also discloses certainfeaturesof the communitythen involved in such research,which it will be helpful to note here. Following his brief history with an introductorysurvey of the applications of relativity, Einstein could list the work of himself and four others on topics in optics, inferences of the energy and momentumof moving systems (the most importantof these being concernedwith the inertialmass of energy), and the dynamics of the materialpoint (electron).The circle of contributors was small, and all the physicists concernedhad been closely involved with the editorsof thejournalin which Einsteinpublishedhis work. Max Laue and Kurdvon Mosengeil (who died before Planckprepared his work for posthumous publicationin 1907) were both Planck's students,while JakobLaub was a studentof the other editor of the Annalen der Physik, Wilhelm Wien. The close personal network was crucialfor stimulatinginterestin Einstein's work and shapingthe meaningthese physicists ascribedto relativity.Einstein and Planck had correspondedon the principle of relativity from mid 1906 but first met when Einstein attended the Naturforscherversammlung in Salzburgin 1909. As Miller reports,Planck's letters show that he had in fact been very concernedby the criticisms of Abrahamand Kaufmann;moreover, Alfred Buchererhad written to Planck communicatinghis own principle of relativity and criticizing Planck's assertionthat the principle of least action was compatiblewith the principleof relativity. On 6 July 1907 Planck wrote to Einstein to say that he was happy to hear that Einstein of relativityconstitute did not shareBucherer' s opinion,because "so long as the supporters so tiny a band as they do at present, it is doubly importantthat they agree with each other."40 Both Laue and Laubwrote firston the applicationof relativityto optics, and each visited Einsteinin Bern. Laue did so in 1906, before he had publishedon relativity.Laub's first publicationin 1907 promptedLaue to observe in correspondencewith Einstein and Laub that the article had two errorsand an inconsistency in the reasoning. Einstein took section of his 1907 the managerialconcern a step further,pointing out in the introductory paperthat Laub's article was not errorfree. Shortly afterwardLaub visited EinsteinhimThus throughcorrespondence self; theirdiscussions resultedin two collaborativepapers.4' and visits in Bern, Einstein,Planck,Laue, and Laub workedhardto ensurethatthey wrote on relativityin a similar sense. The 1907 paperindicates that, far from being isolated and distantin the Swiss PatentOffice, Einstein had alreadyplayed a centralrole in guiding an comongoing research project amongst a small but relatively tightly knit interpretative munity. Personal contact and correspondencesupplementedpublished papers in the formation and maintenanceof this community;it is the relatedwork of these physicists that providedthe foundationfor the "union"of Lorentz's theory and the principleof relativity that Einstein was able to articulatein 1907.
MINKOWSKI'S DISTINCTIONS
But within the following year there was to be a contributionfrom someone outside this select band, which both introduceda new formalismfor electrodynamicsand dramatically
40 Planck to Einstein, 6 July 1907 (cit. n. 22), quoted in Miller, Einstein's Special Theoryof Relativity,p. 235. IntellectualMasteryof Nature, 2 vols., Vol. 2: TheNow See also ChristaJungnickeland Russell McCormmach, Univ. Chicago Press, 1986), p. 251. Mighty TheoreticalPhysics, 1870-1925 (Chicago/London: 41 Max Laue to Einstein, 4 Sept. 1907, in Collected Papers of Einstein, Vol. 5, ed. Klein et al., pp. 72-73 (cit. n. 27), p. (Laub had interchangedgroup and phase velocity); and Einstein, "Oberdas Relativitatsprinzip" in 414. On Laub's collaborationwith Einstein see Lewis Pyenson, "Einstein'sEarly Scientific Collaboration," YoungEinstein (cit. n. 1), pp. 215-246, on pp. 220-225.
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Figure 3. Hermann Minkowski (1864-1909)
Courtesy of the Niedersachsische Staats- und
Universitcitsbibliothek, Gottingen.
increasedinterest in the theory of relativity. Its author,too, began his majorarticle, "The Fundamental Equationsfor ElectromagneticProcesses in Moving Bodies," with a form of
historical survey, one that may have drawn on Einstein's earlier account but sought to
introducequite a differentemphasis.The mathematician HermannMinkowski(see Figure and was readyto take 3) had studiedthe contributionsof both Einsteinand HenriPoincare' Poincare's group-theoreticapproacha step furtherin relation to relativity. After stating that there were at present many differences of opinion concerning the basic equationsof the electrodynamicsof moving bodies, Minkowskiintroducedthe following threefolddistinction in the use of terms to designate relativity, because, he wrote explicitly, "this appearsto me useful in orderto be able to characterizethe presentposition of the electrodynamics of moving bodies."The theoremof relativityexpressedthe purelymathematical fact that the electromagneticequationswere covariantagainstthe Lorentztransformations and rested on the form of the differentialequationsfor the propagationof waves with the velocity of light. The postulate of relativityinvolved a confidence, ratherthan a complete that yet-unrecognizedlaws relatingto ponderablematterwould be covarunderstanding, iant against the Lorentz transformations. The principle of relativityinvolved the idea that Lorentz covarianceheld as a definite connection between genuine, observablequantities
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for moving bodies.42 Having outlinedthese conceptualdifferencesin the interpretation of the same set of equations, Minkowski then related them to a historical survey of earlier work. He held Lorentz to have discovered the theorem of relativity and to have created the postulate of relativity as the hypothesis that electrons and mattersufferedcontraction accordingto a definite law as a consequence of motion. Minkowski wrote that Einstein had then broughtto its sharpestexpression the fact that this postulatewas not an artificial hypothesis but one forced by a new conception of time.43 Previously Kaufmannhad comparedLorentz's and Einstein's approachesconceptually. Minkowski's discussion shows how history can be used to serve a similargoal of conceptual understanding. Bringing togetherthe citation of past work and a conceptualanalysis allows each resource to be used to clarify the other: the conceptual analysis gives an interpretation of the earlierwork, perhapsfrom a differentperspectivethanhad previously been possible, while the reader'sindependentknowledge of the past work (now referred to only briefly) can be drawn on to assist understandingof the conceptual analysis presented. Here, these resources are employed to clarify presentwork-and we can see how importantthis was in a context where several interpretations of the single set of equations were current.In Minkowski's discussion, as in Einstein's earlier work, conceptualclarification and historicalinterpretation go hand in hand:reference to the archive of physics clarifies its currentstate. That Minkowski described Einstein's achievement as centering on the conception of time could reflect his own assessment of the 1905 paper (recall that Kaufmannspoke of Einstein's definition of simultaneityand time) but may also have been suggested by the termsEinstein gave in 1907, which raises the possibility thatEinstein's historicalaccount influenced Minkowski's evaluation of the history of relativity.44 It is also possible that
42 Vorgangein bewegten Korpern," HermannMinkowski,"Die Grundgleichungen fur die elektromagnetischen Konigliche Gesellschaft der Wissenschaftenzu Goittingen: Mathematisch-Physikalische Klasse: Nachrichten, 1908, pp. 53-111, on pp. 55 (quotation),54; the historical survey is on pp. 53-56. Tetu Hirosige argues for the historical importanceof Minkowski's work in promotingthe developmentof relativity:Hirosige, "EtherProblem" (cit. n. 12). Many authorshave tended to discount Minkowski's significance owing to the view that Min(andhence, the assumptionis made, kowski himself did not fully understand the natureof Einstein's contribution of Einstein's work). Leo Corryarguesthatthe roots and motivations could not lead othersto a clear appreciation of both Hilbert's and Minkowski's contributions to relativityhave remainedonly partiallyanalyzedbecause the histories of special and general relativity have most often been told from the perspective of Einstein's work: Corry,"Minkowskiand the Postulateof Relativity"(cit. n. 2). For earlierapproachesto Minkowski see Stanley Goldberg,"TheEarlyResponse to Einstein's Special Theoryof Relativity, 1905-1911: A Case Studyin National Differences" (Ph.D. diss., HarvardUniv., 1969), pp. 111-147; Goldberg, UnderstandingRelativity (cit. n. 10), pp. 162-168; Lewis Pyenson, "TheGottingenReceptionof Einstein's GeneralTheoryof Relativity"(Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins Univ., 1973); and Pyenson, "Hermann Minkowski and Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity," "Physics in the Shadow of Mathematics:The GottingenElectron-TheorySeminarof 1905," "Relativityin Late WilhelmianGermany:The Appeal to a Pre-established Harmonybetween MathematicsandPhysics,"and"Mathematics, Education,and the GottingenApproachto Physical Reality, 1890-1914," in YoungEinstein, pp. 80100, 101-136, 137-157, 158-193. These authorstake as a primarytask the delineationof Minkowski's approach and "mathematical" and the latteras "physifrom Einstein's, with the formerbeing characterized as "formalist" cal." See also Peter Louis Galison, "Minkowski'sSpace-Time:From Visual Thinkingto the Absolute World," Hist. Stud. Phys. Sci., 1979, 10:85-121, which draws on manuscriptsources to discuss the development over time of Minkowski's geometric formulationof relativity; and Walter, "Minkowski,Mathematicians,and the MathematicalTheory of Relativity" (cit. n. 31), which discusses Minkowski's changing attributions(or suppressions) of authorshipto Lorentz,Poincare,and Einstein. 43 Minkowski, "Grundgleichungen fuirdie elektromagnetischen Vorgange,"p. 55. In a section on the concept of time, Minkowskialso describedEinstein's 1905 paperas meeting the wish to bringhome the physicalmeaning of the natureof the Lorentztransformations; see ibid., pp. 68-70, esp. p. 70. 44 Minkowski's use of the expression "sharpest" recalls Einstein's 1907 terminology. However, while the Equations"was first publicationdates make it possible that Minkowski drew on the 1907 paper, "Fundamental presentedto the Mathematicaland Physical Section of the Gottingen Society for the Sciences at a meeting of 21 December 1907, before the Jahrbuchvolume appearedin January1908.
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Einstein's accountwas productivein a second respect. When he presentedhis geometrical in his famous "Space and Time" formulationto the Cologne Naturforscherversammlung lecturein September1908, Minkowskidescribedhimself as strippingthe concept of space of its absolute nature,just as Einstein before him had strippedtime of an absolutenature. We might therefore conjecture that Minkowski's increasing concentrationon space in came partlyin creativeresponse to the focus on developing his space-timerepresentations time Einstein had pursued in 1905 and articulatedas such in 1907. Interestingly,Minkowski expressed something close to chagrinat the complex path that had actuallyled to possibility of an relativityand his own late arrivalon the scene, raising the counterfactual alternativehistory in order to suggest that the culture of pure mathematicsprovided unparalleledresourcesfor work in physics. Minkowski statedthat his addresswas intended to show "how it might be possible, setting out from the acceptedmechanics of the present day, along a purely mathematicalline of thought,to arriveat changed ideas of space and group G and time." This claim was embodied througha discussion of the transformation the structureof space and time appropriate to Newtonian mechanics, before Minkowski introduced(purely formally) the parameterc and consideredthe graphicalrepresentation of the invariantexpression c2t2 -X2 - y2 - Z2 = 1. In the limit when c = 00, the group is that appropriate to Newtonian mechanics;however, Minkowski wrote,
since G, is mathematicallymore intelligible than G_, it looks as thoughthe thoughtmight have strucksome mathematician fancy-free, that after all, as a matterof fact, naturalphenomenado not possess an invariancewith the group G. but ratherwith the group Gc, c being finite and determinate,but in ordinaryunits of measure,extremely great. Such a premonitionwould have been an extraordinary triumphfor pure mathematics.45
In fact on this occasion mathematicshad only the satisfaction of being wise after the event, but Minkowski could now reveal that the value of c was the velocity of light and that his theory gave the Lorentz transformation equations known to physics. Thanks to "its happy antecedents,with its senses sharpenedby an unhamperedoutlook to far horizons," mathematicswas able "to grasp forthwiththe far reaching consequences of such a metamorphosisof our concept of nature."Minkowski concluded his address with the thought that those who found the abandonmentof long-establishedviews painful would be conciliated by "the idea of a pre-establishedharmonybetween pure mathematicsand
physics."46
The message of his earlierpaper,though seldom expressed so explicitly, had been very equations similar.After describingthe differentsenses in which the Lorentztransformation Minkowski went on had been used and statingthe significanceof Einstein's contribution, to articulatea claim for his own originality:
it has still not Up till now the principleof relativityin the sense in which I have characterized been formulatedfor the electrodynamicsof moving bodies. In the presentpublicationI obtain, throughthe principle as I have formulatedit, the fundamentalequationsfor moving bodies in
(cit. n. 13), pp. 54-71, trans. 45HermannMinkowski, "Raumund Zeit," in Lorentz et al., Relativitatsprinzip as "Space and Time" in Lorentz et al., Principle of Relativity,trans. Perretand Jeffrey (cit. n. 13), pp. 75-91, on pp. 82-83, 75, 79. For a study of the evolution of Minkowski's views over time see Galison, "Minkowski's Space-Time"(cit. n. 42). 46 Minkowski, "Space and Time," pp. 79, 91. On Minkowski's appeal to preestablishedharmony see, e.g., Pyenson, "Relativityin Late WilhelmianGermany"(cit. n. 42).
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a completely clear, unambiguousversion. Therebyit is shown thatnone of the formspreviously adoptedfor these equationshave satisfiedthe principleexactly.47
This claim had a broad scope and a very specific target. The broaderimplicationwas that Minkowski's mathematicalapparatusafforded a conceptual consistency and clarity not achieved by previous authors;this was broughthome by the specific observationthat despite the expectationthat the equationsLorentz had adoptedfor moving bodies would correspondto the postulate of relativity, this was not actually the case, in particular,for Lorentz's treatmentof magnetizedbodies. In makingthis observation,Minkowski drew a distinction between Lorentz's electron theory and the consequences of relativity-of a kind unprecedentedin public discussion of the principle. Einstein had discussed the appropriate form of equationsfor the microscopictheoryof the electronbuthad not attempted to apply relativityto the macroscopictheoryof electromagneticand optical phenomenain moving materialbodies (despite the generalityof the title of his 1905 paper).It was here that Minkowski showed that Lorentz's derivationswere in conflict with the requirements of the principle of relativity. Thus both Minkowski's fine-grainedconceptual-historical analysis and his more expansive historical fantasy carry a disciplinaryimport:no one is Minkowski's criticalanalysis betterequippedto furtherrelativitythan the mathematician. of past work went hand in hand with a prospective vision of the future, and his papers show a continual and productivetension between allying his endeavor with the body of an existing theory and giving that theory a distinctivelydifferentcast. This was expressed very clearly throughMinkowski's introductionof a new terminologyfor the principleof relativityin his "Spaceand Time"lecture.Therehe spoke of "thepostulateof the absolute world"or, briefly, "theworld postulate,"because "thepostulateof relativity"did not seem of invarianceagainstthe Lorentztransto convey the full significanceof the requirement formations,once the concept of space had been strippedof its absolutenature.48
A COPERNICAN MOVEMENT
At the same congress at which Minkowski presentedrelativity as a bold new worldview, Max Planck, keeping his eye on the experimentalsituation,prefaced a discussion of the
fur die elektromagnetischen Vorgange"(cit. n. 42), p. 55. Minkowski, "Grundgleichungen in der Theorie von Lorentz,"pp. 76-77, esp. p. 76; and Ibid.; see also Sect. 9, "Die Grundgleichungen Minkowski, "Space and Time" (cit. n. 45), pp. 82-83. John Stachel discusses the distinctionbetween the microscopic theory of the electron and its applicationto the macroscopic equations of materialmedia, and different approachesto the macroscopic equations, in his editorial note "Einsteinand Laub on the Electrodynamicsof Moving Media,"in CollectedPapers of Einstein, Vol. 2, ed. Stachel (cit. n. 12), pp. 503-507. Einsteinand Laub took up Minkowski's argumentfor a distinction between Lorentz's theory and relativity in the treatmentof capable of detecting a differencebetween the two magnetizedbodies by proposingan experimentalarrangement approaches:Albert Einstein and Jakob Laub, "Ober die elektromagnetischenGrundgleichungenfur bewegte Korper," Ann. Phys., 1908, 26:532-540, on pp. 536-540. However, many authorsaccepted that Lorentz's approach, consistently extended, was equivalent to relativity. As has often been noted, Einstein and Laub also reacted critically to the techniques (and some physical arguments)Minkowski had developed, showing how Minkowski's results could be achieved using the mathematicalapparatusEinstein had employed in 1905. See Ann.Phys., furbewegte Kbrper," Grundgleichungen ibid.; andEinsteinandLaub,"Uberdie elektromagnetischen 1908, 26:541-550. Their response indicates that they saw a close connection between mathematicaltechniques and interpretation more broadly and at this stage wished "relativisticphysics" to retain the cast Einstein had given it. Laubwrote to Einstein:"Iam now still more skepticaltowardsMinkowski'spaper;if yourwork weren't equation for time we would still at best be at the same standpoint available, with Minkowski's transformation is concerned) as with Lorentzian 'Local Time.' " Jakob Laub to Einstein, 18 (as far as physical interpretation May 1908, in Collected Papers of Einstein, Vol. 5, ed. Klein et al., pp. 119-121. Their stance in regard to Minkowski's formalismwas not followed by most physicists, and there is evidence that by 1910 Einstein had begun to appreciatethe four-dimensionalapproach(ibid., p. 121, editorialfootnote 12).
47 48
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principleof action andreactionin relativitywith the cautiousobservationthatat the present time "Einstein'stheory of relativity"could in no way be regardedas certain, though he thoughtthat since its deviations from currentordinarytheories were limited to very small terms, it could be taken as correct up to those deviations and considerationsbased on it therefore had some importance.However, together with Minkowski's theoreticalwork, new experimentalstudies-also announcedin Cologne-soon changedthe climate of discussion. Towardthe end of 1908 the Bonn physicist Alfred Buchererbroughtto conclusion a series of experimentsutilizing ,B-rays of radium salts to test the velocity/mass relation of the electron-and proclaimed the confirmationof the principle of relativity (at the expense of his own theory of the electron). Although his papers in the Physikalische ZeitschriftandtheAnnalender Physikwere immediatelyfollowed by responsesfromAdolf Bestelmeyer refuting the accuracyof his tests (to which Buchererin turnrespondedvigorously), Bucherer'swork was extremely importantbecause it gave those who supported relativity a counterto the earliernegative experimentsof Kaufmann.49 H. A. Lorentz,for example, wrote that "in all probability, the only objection that could be raised to the hypothesis of the deformable electron and the principle of relativity has now been removed."'50
It is interestingthat after presentinghis experimentalmethods and detailinghis results, Bucherer,like the theorists Einstein and Minkowski before him, took the opportunityto discuss differencesand similaritiesbetween Lorentz's andEinstein's approaches, this time in the context of a historicaloverview of electromagnetism from the time of Maxwell that he said described"the epistemological history of the ether."Bucherersaw Lorentzas the founder of the principle of relativity, despite his reliance on the hypothesis of absolute motion; he held that Einstein's derivationopened the possibility of constructinga wholly
49Planck, "Bemerkungen zum Prinzipder Aktion und Reaktion"(cit. n. 21), p. 729. Bucherer'swork was first Die experimenpublished in the PhysikalischeZeitschrift:Alfred Bucherer,"Messungenan Becquerelstrahlen: Theorie,"Phys. Z., 1908, 9:755-762. Then followed Bucherer,"Die talle Bestatigungder Lorentz-Einsteinschen Ann. Phys., 1909, 28:513-536; and, in response to Besteldes Relativitatsprinzips," experimentalleBestaitigung meyer, Bucherer,"Antwortauf die Kritikdes Hrn.A. Bestelmeyerbeziiglich meiner experimentalleBestatigung ibid., 30:974-986; and Bucherer, "Erwiderungauf die Bemerkungen des Hrn. A. des Relativitatsprinzips," Bestelmeyer,"ibid., 1910, 33:853-856. Bestelmeyer's papers were Adolf Bestelmeyer, "Bemerkungenzu der " ibid., 1909, Abhandlung Hrn. A. H. Bucherers, 'Die experimentalle Bestatigung des Relativitatsprinzips,' auf die Antwort des Hrn. A. H. Bucherer,"ibid., 1910, 32:23130:166-174; and Bestelmeyer, "Erwiderung the perioddiscussed in this essay, controversyattendedeach experimental 235. It shouldbe noted thatthroughout proclamationon the confirmationor refutationof relativity;none could be taken as definitive. Further,distinguishing between the contributionsof Lorentz and Einstein was not in general a high priority for the experimentalistsconcerned.Most commonly their work was posed as a test between the Abrahamrigid-bodyelectron of Lorentz and Einstein. Typically the identity of the theories or "Relativtheorie" and the "Relativititstheorie" of Lorentz and Einstein was assumed-certainly as far as their experimentalconsequences were concernedNevertheless and the Lorentztheoryof the electronoften formedthe basis for any discussionof the Relativtheorie. it is significantthat the tests were regardedas of high importanceat least as much for their test of the principle of relativityas for making a decision between differenttheoriesof the electron. See, e.g., the exchanges between Erich Hupkaand Wilhelm Heil discussed in Pyenson, "PhysicalSense in Relativity"(cit. n. 1), pp. 202-203. A consensus that Kaufmann'sresults were in errorseems to have emerged aroundthe experimentsof C. Schaefer and G. Neumann of 1914-1916. However, subsequentreviews have upheld Bestelmeyer's criticisms and concluded that while they were consistent with relativity, none of the previous electron experimentswas in fact precise enough to distinguish between the different theories. See C. T. Zahn and A. H. Sprees, "A Critical Analysis of the Classical Experimentson the Relativistic Variationof ElectronMass," Physical Review, 1938, 53:511-521; and P. S. Farag6 and L. Janossy, "Review of the ExperimentalEvidence for the Law of Variation of the ElectronMass with Velocity," Nuovo Cimento, 1957, 5:1411-1436. 50 H. A. Lorentz, The Theory of Electrons (Leipzig: Teubner, 1909), p. 329. For a discussion of Bucherer's experimentand responses to it see Miller, Einstein's Special Theoryof Relativity,pp. 345-351.
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new, monistic, pictureof the essence of matter,the ether,and theirreciprocalconnections, assuming the essential equivalenceof the two.51 The increasedattentionwas such that by 1910 Max Planck was ready both to abandon his earliercaution aboutthe validity of the principleof relativityand to embarkon a more elaborateuse of historical argument.In an address to the Naturforscherversammlung in Konigsberg, in which he spoke on mechanical explanationsin modem physics, Planck suggested that just as Copernicus's work had shown that the vertical direction was not absolute,but relative to position on a sphericalearth,relativitytheorynow showed a more general relativity of time and velocity in inertial systems.52Quite explicitly, however, Planck offered the Copernicananalogy to teach more than such featuresof the conceptual natureof the theory.In fact, he firstintroducedit as a comparisonof the social dimensions of two revolutions.He wrotethatat presentthereseemed to be a prospectof a final decision between the mechanical and nonmechanicalconceptions of natureas a result of a recent movement-relativity-that had affected the whole of physics: "in the wake of this movement, dissensions rage among scientists which can only be comparedto those which raged aroundthe Copernicanview of the universe. I will endeavourto show what has led to this revolution, and how the crisis consequentupon it can be settled."53 In drawingthis comparison,Planck implied that opposition to relativity was to be expected, given its revolutionarynature(thus he explained the opposition away); moreover, since relativityis comparedwith the successful Copernicanrevolution,the similartriumph of the new theory is invested with an almost historical inevitability. Those who do not accept relativity are likened to children who at first find it difficult to believe that there are people walking below them on the other side of the earth.Planckevidently considered relativity to have passed the ad absurdumtest. His general strategyis an interestingand importantone that we have already seen suggested in Einstein's history: to make the comparisonbetween relativity and the past seem more relevantthan that with alternative theories.JohnEarmanandClarkGlymourhave suggestedthatthe neglect of contemporary alternativeswas of considerableimportancein the presentationof tests of gravitational theories in 1919.54 We can now see that the groundsfor such a narrowingof possibilities had been preparedin histories of special relativity. in Lewis Pyenson regardsPlanck as having proclaimedEinstein the "new Copernicus" this lecture. It is certainlytrue that two years earlier, in Cologne, Planck had referredto "Einstein'stheory";however, it is interestingthat in 1910 Planck actually comparedthe movementof relativity with the Copernicantheory and, when he came to list those responsiblefor the new movement,gave an assessmentquite similarto Minkowski's.Planck
(cit. n. 49), pp. 531-534, on pp. 531 (quoBestatigungdes Relativitatsprinzips" 51Bucherer,"Experimentalle tation), 533, 534. 52 Max Planck, "Die Stellung der neueren Physik zur mechanischen Naturanschauung," Phys. Z., 1910, 11:922-932, on pp. 928-929, trans. as "The Place of Modem Physics in the Mechanical View of Nature,"in Planck,A Surveyof Physical Theory,trans.R. Jones and D. H. Williams (New York: Dover, 1960), pp. 27-44, on pp. 38-39. cf. "Place of Modem Physics," p. 28. In a statement incorporatedin the 53 Ibid., p. 923 (my translation); commission report (of April 1910) that nominatedEinstein for his professorshipin Prague, Planck expressed himself in a similar way: "the extent and profundityof the revolution in the scope of the physical world view of the Copernican evoked by this principlecan only be comparedwith thatbroughtaboutthroughthe introduction world-system."Quoted in Einstein, Collected Papers of Einstein, Vol. 5, ed. Klein et al., pp. xxxvi, xxxviii, in n. 16 (my translation). 54 Planck, "Stellung der neueren Physik," p. 929 ("Place of Modem Physics," p. 39); and John Earmanand ClarkGlymour, "Relativityand Eclipses: The British Expeditions of 1919 and Their Predecessors,"Hist. Stud. Phys. Sci., 1980, 11:49-85.
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wrote: "Underthe pioneers of the new terrainwe have first to mention HendrikAntoon Lorentz,who discoveredthe concept of relative time and introducedit into electrodynamics, without however drawing any radical conclusions from it; then Albert Einstein, who first had the boldness to proclaimthe relativityof time as a universalpostulate;and Hermann Minkowski, who succeeded in fashioning the theory of relativity into a consistent mathematicalsystem."'55 In fact, Planck devoted some attentionto Minkowski's contributions,in the context of remarksthatconsideredthe acceptanceand developmentof relativityin termsof the membershipof differentcommunitiesof physicists. Plancksuggestedthatit was not an accident that the abstractproblems of relativity had chiefly attractedmathematicians, particularly after Minkowski had shown that the mathematicalmethods employed "were the same as not only to those those for four dimensionalgeometry."However, relativitywas important who could use their mathematicalexpertise in its development. Planck wrote that even and "unprejudiced") were not opposed experimentalists (at least those who were "genuine" to the theoryof relativity.Membersof this community,he said, allowed mattersto proceed quietly and took their standfrom what could be provedexperimentallyin a field thattaxed the limits of instrumentation.56 Planck, then, offered a rudimentary map of the dynamicsof the debatearoundrelativity in Germany;in several features, at least, such a map would have looked quite different just a few years earlier.Rememberinghow hardPlanck had worked to preventrelativity from being dismissed following Kaufmann'sresults, and noting the dispute that still attended each experimentalstudy, it is surprisingthat Planck could representthe experimental community as proceeding quietly. A preconditionof this comparativejudgment was the increasing discussion of the theoreticalnatureof relativity that was fostered by Einstein, Planck himself, and Minkowski. In 1908 Planck spoke cautiouslyof the validity of the principle;only in 1910 could he describe relativity as having given rise to raging dissension. It is thus of the essence that Planck ascribed the new revolution not to the individualEinstein but to the movement of a community-and Planck clearly makes the most of the episode's potentialto assertthe disciplinarypreeminenceof theoreticians. In Octoberof the same year H. A. Lorentzpresenteda similarlybroadandincrementalist picture of the development of relativity in a series of six lectures in Gbttingenentitled "Old and New Questions in Physics." However, unlike Bucherer and Planck, Lorentz the principleto Einstein.s7 His lecturesintroducedrelativityin the context of an attributed
Pyenson, "Relativity 55 "It was Planck ... who in 1910 elevated Einstein to the statusof the new Copernicus": Revolution"(cit. n. 1), p. 77 (see also p. 66). For the referenceto "Einstein'stheory"see Planck, "Bemerkungen zum Prinzip der Aktion und Reaktion"(cit. n. 21), p. 729. For the quotationsee Planck, "Stellungder neueren Physik,"p. 929 (cf. "Place of Modem Physics," pp. 39-40). 56 Planck, "Stellungder neuerenPhysik,"pp. 929-930 (cf. "Place of ModernPhysics,"p. 40). On Minkowski and the Maththeory of relativity see Walter,"Minkowski,Mathematicians, as the source for a "mathematical" Planck may have included Dimitri ematical Theory of Relativity"(cit. n. 31). Amongst such "mathematicians" Mirimanoff and Philipp Frank, who published papers in the Annalen exploring the relationshipsbetween the principle of relativity and Lorentz's electron theory based on Minkowski's formalism, and Max Born, whose work on a rigid-bodymodel of the electron gave rise to considerablediscussion on the concept of rigidity and the relationshipbetween relativityand electrontheory. Frankwas responsiblefor introducingthe term "Galilean to Newtonian mechanics: Philipp Frank, equations appropriate to describe the transformation transformations" Vorgangein bewegten "Das Relativitatsprinzip der Mechanikund die Gleichungenfur die elektromagnetischen Kbrpern," Ann. Phys., 1908, 27:897-902. Born's paperswere Max Born, "Die trage Masse und das Relativitatsprinzip,"ibid., 1909, 28:571-584; Born, "Die Theorie des starrenElektronsin der Kinematikdes Relativitatsprinzip,"ibid., 30:1-56; and Born, "Uberdie Dynamik des Elektronsin der Kinematikdes Relativitatsprinzip," Phys. Z., 1909, 10:814-817. See Staley, "Bornand the GermanPhysics Community"(cit. n. 2), Chs. 4, 5. pleasureto speak of Einstein's principleof relativityin the town in which 57 He wrote that it was a particular
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accountof the ether and electron theorybefore going on to discuss quantumtheory-also recently accorded fundamentalimportance.Like Planck, but speaking less explicitly in disciplinaryterms, Lorentz described relativity as having a multifacetednature:mathematical, epistemological, and physical. His brief discussion of the epistemology of space in shapingotherphysicists' views and time took up the questionthathad been so important of relativity-the relationbetween his own and subsequentwork. It is revealingthatwhile Lorentz referredto currentresearch discussing the mathematicaland physical sides of relativity,he made epistemology centralto the meaning of the theory but largely independent of the endeavor to create a relativistic physics. Lorentz indicated clearly that he recognized a strong reading of the implications of relativity, attributingto Einstein and Minkowski (without distinction) a denial of the existence of the ether and true time, but he stated that neverthelesshis own preferencewas to see space and time as separateand distinct and to hold to both an ether and a conception of true time. Lorentzthus made it extremely clear that he wanted no full "union"with the new approach.Nevertheless, he was very happy to assimilate the continuing work in the field, and his discussion of the of relativ"physicalside" indicates most clearly the inclusive natureof his understanding istic physics, framedas it was in terms made possible by Minkowski.58 We have now considereda numberof highly consequentialinstancesin which different physicists integratedrelativity into a historical frameworkin arguingfor a particularunderstandingof its natureand consequences.In comparisonto Planck's general article,the researchpapersI have cited relatedrelativityto immediatelyantecedentstudies and Newtonian mechanics in order to convey the characterof particularconceptual innovations, though often with quite different evaluations and implications. Einstein, for example, stressed the evolutionarynatureof relativity's developmentand its close associationwith Lorentz's theory of the electron,while Minkowski highlighteddistinctionsin drawingout different ways in which the principle could be conceived. Lorentz, for his part, isolated epistemological questions from other aspects in order to repudiatea complete union between his work and a strongreadingof relativity.But in additionto providingorientation at this fine-grainedlevel, all had also taken the opportunityto put the story in the context of more general messages, providing research and disciplinary guidelines on a broader of the luminiferousether and Buchererfor a scale. Einstein arguedfor the abandonment monistic approach,while Minkowski held that it was importantto show that what had been achieved through a difficult historical progressionin physics could be approached more directly by the royal road of pure mathematics.Drawing on the subject of his own
Minkowski had worked: Lorentz, "Alte und neue Fragen" (cit. n. 35), p. 1236. Lorentz had also discussed Einstein's work in his majorstudy of electron theory in 1909, describingit as a "very interestinginterpretation" of his own results (which Lorentz had developed using "effective coordinates"and "effective time"). He wrote that "the chief difference [is] that Einstein simply postulates what we have deduced, with some difficulty and not altogethersatisfactorily,from the fundamentalequationsof the electromagneticfield. By doing so, he may certainly take credit for making us see in the negative result of experimentslike those of Michelson, Rayleigh and Brace, not a fortuitouscompensationof opposing effects, but the manifestationof a generaland fundamental principle":Lorentz, Theoryof Electrons (cit. n. 50), pp. 223-230, on pp. 223, 230. Here he also noted that his own approachhad the virtue of endowing the ether with a certaindegree of substantiality(see below). equations, pointing backwardin time to show that in one 58 Lorentz began by outlining the transformation form they had already been employed by WoldemarVoigt in an 1887 discussion of the Doppler effect (Minkowski had pointed this out in "Raumund Zeit" [cit. n. 45], p. 58). He then went on to discuss the ways in which the equations of motion of the electron (and other fields of research)could be broughtinto accord with of the concept of propertime as one of his more the principle.Here LorentzdescribedMinkowski's introduction beautiful discoveries and cast his own discussion in terms suggested by Minkowski's work (comparing"Newforce, for example). See Lorentz,"Alte und neue Fragen,"pp. 1236-1244; Lorentz tonian"with "Minkowskian" makes his own preferencesclear on p. 1236.
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recent researchpapers and his concern with unifying principles,Planck's accountrelated relativity to what he regarded as the "chief law of physics, the pinnacle of the whole system,"the principleof least action.59 One feature of Planck's article, then, was that it related relativity to its antecedentsin developing a particular story of the progressof physics. However, like Minkowski's counterfactualhistory,with its combinedconceptualand disciplinaryimport,Planck's extended use of a historicalanalogy involved quite a new employmentof historicalmaterialto aid the propagationof relativity, one that explicitly addressed both conceptual and social dimensions. Planck's discussion is abbreviated,listing pioneers and mentioning subcommunities in general terms only, but it reflects quite a sophisticatedunderstanding of the varied senses in which differentphysicists were able to respondto relativity,relatingthese to differences in background.This is an account of a contextualnature;it is relatedto the "contingent" repertoireGilbert and Mulkay identify as a contrastto the "empiricist" repertoire.60 EINSTEIN'S PAPEROF 1905
The earliest histories of relativity show very clearly that the recognitionof differentcontributionsas foundational(or even as constitutinga discovery of the principleof relativity) was an importantfeature of the interpretative,historical work involved in forming and conveying understandings of relativity.However, these accountshave displayedclear differences in their evaluations,even while drawingwhat by 1910 was a common distinction between the contributions of Lorentzand Einstein.But more significantthanany variation in evaluationis their primaryconcern with a distributionof credit and shadingsof understanding.They have in common a representation of relativity as the work of several authors. In 1911 this catholicity was to give way in two very differentparticipant histories,one brief and concise, the other extended and closely argued,as Arnold SommerfeldandMax Laue signaled and sheeted home the collapse to a single discoverermost common in our present accounts. Asked to give a paper on relativity for the Naturforscherversammlung in 1911, Sommerfeld declined to do so (and spoke instead on quantumtheory) because, he said, "the principle of relativity no longer belongs to the essentially currentquestions of physics. Although only six years old-Einstein's work appearedin 1905-it appears to have alreadybecome a certainpossession of the physicist."'61 It is fascinatingand suggestive that it is at just the point that relativityis representedas a "certainpossession"-and no longer current-that it is also presentedas the productof a single man. Coming on the heels of the dissension Planck described,and going one step
59Planck wrote that from the principle of least action four equally importantprinciplesradiatein four directions-corresponding to the four universaldimensions of the new theory of relativity.The threefoldprincipleof momentumcorrespondsto the three space dimensions, while the principle of energy correspondsto the time dimension. It had never before been possible to follow these principlesback to theircommon origin. See Planck, "Stellung der neueren Physik" (cit. n. 52), p. 930 ("Place of Modem Physics," p. 41). I have noted Planck's early interestin the fact that the principle of least action proved to be invariantagainst the Lorentztransformations. Minkowski's unificationof the Lorentzforce andthe energyconservationlaw for electromagnetic processes made possible a far more concise treatmentof the principleof least action than Planck had been able to provide in 1907. See Miller, Einstein's Special Theoryof Relativity,pp. 368-369. 60 Gilbertand Mulkay, "Experiments Are the Key" (cit. n. 4); see also note 33, above. 61 In contrast, Sommerfeld described quantumtheory as a field still subject to controversy and conceptual und seine allgemeine Bedeutung fur die change. See Arnold Sommerfeld, "Das Plancksche Wirkungsquanten Molekularphysik," Phys. Z., 1912, 11:1057-1068, on p. 1057.
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attentionto quantum thanLorentz' s evenhandedoverview by positively transferring further theory, Sommerfeld's treatmentimplies not only that he holds the key to the debate but that the door to dissent is locked. In partthese remarksmay be taken to reflect changes in viewpoint alreadyfairly widely realized in the Germanphysics community-but the pluralityof earlierapproachessuggests the more significantpossibility thatheraldingone man as the discovererwas, rather,a means of makingrelativitya sure possession. Certainlythe requiresexplanation.It will not be possible fully singularityof Sommerfeld's attribution to justify this here, but I would suggest that by 1911 physicists may have been ready to point to Einstein alone as discovererbecause this was the first period in which many of those central to Germanphysics not only appreciatedthe natureof his contributionsbut with a definite view of also agreed with his interpretation of relativity-and in particular I want to advancethe complex argumentthata certain its implicationsfor electrontheory.62 narrowingof focus-to promoteEinstein as discovererin 1905-went hand in hand with an acceptance of ratherbroaderfeatures of an Einsteinianreading, which emerged only after 1905; but this focus on Einstein was accompaniedby a simultaneousrecognitionand utilization of the techniques and contributionsof others. To make this view plausible it will be helpful to explore in some detail the contexts of such individualizedattributions at differenttimes and to examine Sommerfeld'sown views more closely. Kaufmann'searly descriptionindicates the potential for some kind of recognition of Einstein from the publicationof his 1905 paper-and it is not surprisingthat later theoreticianswere ready to pronouncejudgmentsbased on conceptualdistinctionsratherthan emphasizingformal or empiricalequivalence, as many experimentalistsdid. Laue, Laub, and Minkowski provide examples. Nevertheless, the varied and gradualistaccounts we have seen clearly indicate that it was by no means a necessary-or trivial-matter to identify relativityprimarilywith any single moment or founder.Further,the fact that the of individualauthorship to Einstein early (and privateand personallydirected)attributions came from Max Laue and JakobLaub-physicists clearly working within an Einsteinian of and practices-suggests that an unambiguousattribution frameworkof understandings thansimplerecognition), sharedinterpretations (rather discoverydependedon substantially at least at a time when the field was recognized to be open. Those who accepted relativityin this period did so in the face of strong argumentsfor its experimentaldisproof. By late 1908, however, the work of Minkowski and Bucherer had substantiallychanged the climate of discussion. A study of the gradualdevelopment of Sommerfeld's views will reveal the complex backgroundto that physicist's public attributionof relativity to Einstein in 1911 and show the centralityof electron theory in of others as well. A mathhis thinking,a featurethat is likely to have been characteristic ematicianwho made the transitionfrom a chair in technical mechanics at the Technische Hochschule in Aachen to the chair of theoreticalphysics in Munich (in 1906), largely on the basis of highly technical studies developing the Abrahammodel of the electron, Sommerfeld initially argued against the Lorentz-Einsteinview in response to Planck's 1906 advocacy. At that point Sommerfeld described the Lorentz-Einsteintheory as old-fashThree years later, ioned in comparisonto the aims of the electromagneticworldview.63
62 The argumentadvanced here draws on a detailed study of electron theory and relativity in this period in Staley, "Relativity,Rigidity, and Rotation"(cit. n. 38); and Staley, "Bornand the GermanPhysics Community" (cit. n. 2), Chs. 5, 6. An importantfeature of this process was gradual disengagement from the aims of the electromagneticworldview. 63 For Sommerfeld's response see the discussion following Planck, "Prinzipder Relativitat"(cit. n. 18), pp. 759-761; for examples of discussions of Sommerfeld's stance see Holton, "Quanta,Relativity, and Rhetoric" (cit. n. 11), pp. 98-99; and Miller, Einstein's Special Theoryof Relativity,p. 234.
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however, he changedhis mind, possibly for a variety of reasonsbut certainlyin large part owing to his readingof Minkowskiand to changingviews on electrontheory.I have noted Sommerfeld's early 1908 correspondencewith Einstein. Whatever he wrote to prompt Einstein's candid responses, Sommerfeld's views of Einstein's achievements and of relativity were not then dependenton an acceptanceof relativity.In fact, shortlybefore this exchange Sommerfeldhad writtento Lorentzcriticizing the unhealthydogmatismof Einstein's work, which he said expressed "the abstract-conceptual manner of the Semite." Following the account of Bucherer's study at Cologne in late 1908, Sommerfeldwrote to him on the success of the theory; six weeks later he was ready to Lorentzcongratulating proclaimhis own conversionto relativity,writingthatthe systematicform and conception of Minkowski's work in particular had facilitatedhis understanding.64 Minkowski's work was importantfor Sommerfeld's understanding but did not prevent him from taking Einstein's contributionsseriously. Rather,Sommerfeldtook a selective approachto both. From 1906 Einstein's publisheddiscussions of the electronhad increasingly counseled a cautious theoreticalapproachthat was at some variancewith both his private comment to Sommerfeldthat the relativistic treatmentof the electron should not be regardedas definitive and his ongoing unpublishedwork on the subject.In 1909 Sommerfeldrespondedto Max Born's extension of relativityto discuss acceleratedmotion and treat outstandingproblems in electron theory, warning that relativity's restrictionto uniform velocities implied that no certain conclusions could be reached in regardto accelIn doing so he in fact acceptedthe principleof relativityas definingthe theoretical eration.65 possibilities in electron theory. This stance was theoreticallyconservativeand renounced aims until then centralto much work in the field, includingSommerfeld'sown. It involved the judgment that the tools provided by relativity offered few prospects for the further developmentof electron theory and that experimentalwork on the mass/velocity relation was likewise unable to provide furtherguidelines. This is the sense in which it was precisely by defining limits to enquiry that the principle of relativity could become, in the same moment,both a certainpossession and no longer current-remaining a half salvation only. In addition to his advocacy of an Einsteinian approachto electron theory in late Minkowski's methodsin the 1909, in 1910 Sommerfeldpublishedtwo paperspropagating So physics communityby developing a vectorialform of Minkowski's matrixapproach.66 Sommerfeld's (possible) privaterecognition of Einstein in 1908 did not reflect an accep64Arnold Sommerfeld to H. A. Lorentz, 26 Dec. 1907, quoted in Collected Papers of Einstein, Vol. 5, ed. Klein et al., pp. 88-89 n 1; and Sommerfeld to Lorentz, 16 Nov. 1908, 9 Jan. 1909, quoted in Walter, "Minkowski, Mathematicians, and the Mathematical Theoryof Relativity"(cit. n. 31). Sommerfeldmade contactwith Einstein in early 1908 because of their common concern with the propagationof effects with superluminal velocity, but it would be interestingto know whether the characterof his correspondencewas also shaped in partby priorknowledge of Minkowski's "Fundamental Equations"paper (which was delivered in Gottingenin late 1907 but did not appearin print until April 1908). Both Sommerfeld and Einstein were in dialogue with Wien on the question of superluminalsignal velocities. See the editorialnote "Einsteinon SuperluminalSignal Velocities," in Collected Papers of Einstein, Vol. 5, ed. Klein et al., pp. 56-60. 65 Einstein emphasizedparticular theoreticaland conceptualdifficultiesin his publications;see note 38, above. For a discussion of Einstein's unpublishedwork toward a theory of the electron in 1909 see McCormmach, "Einstein,Lorentz, and the ElectronTheory"(cit. n. 12). Sommerfeld's 1909 warningto Born can be found in discussion to Born, "Uberdie Dynamik des Elektrons"(cit. n. 56), p. 817. 66 Arnold Sommerfeld, "Zur Relativitatstheorie,I: Vierdimensionale Vektoralgebra," Ann. Phys., 1910, ibid., 33:649-689. 32:749-776; and Sommerfeld,"ZurRelativitatstheorie, II: VierdimensionaleVektoralgebra," In contrast,in his collaborativepapers with Laub, Einstein had arguedthat while Minkowski's methods in the main agreed with his own, they were mathematicallyratherforbidding-and had then provided a treatmenton the basis of the formal approachEinstein himself had used in 1905. (PerhapsSommerfeldwould have seen that as dogmatic also.)
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tance of relativity;his public recognitionof the physicist in 1911 was accompaniedby an acceptanceof Einstein's views on the relationsbetween relativityand electrontheory;but this by no means represented simply partisanacceptanceof eitherEinsteinor Minkowski.67 Sommerfeld signaled an Einsteinianversion of relativity in a few sentences. The first and authoritative textbook on relativity-and my final example of a participant historyamountedto an extended argumentfor an Einsteinianinterpretation. Published by Max Laue in 1911, the book's very title, Das Relativitdtsprinzip, reflects the centralityof the principle common to many early discussions of relativity. (See Figures 4 and 5.) Laue attributesthe discovery to Einstein in the first line of the preface; and his understanding of relativity as a field of work broaderthan any single contributionis reflected in his incorporation of the results and methods of many figures,especially Einstein,Planck,and Minkowski.68 But an explicitly historical methodological approachwas also integral to Laue's treatment.In addition to drawing out the particularrole history played in Laue's approach,a detailed study of his argumentationwill show that extensive interpretative work went into Laue's representationof Einstein's 1905 paper as distinctively foundational. Using a frameworkfirstoutlinedin Einstein's 1907 paper,Laue opened his firstchapter, entitled "The Problem-Situation," by consideringthe principleof relativityand the transformation equations appropriateto classical mechanics. The body of the chapter then discussed a group of empiricalresults that had to be incorporated in any electromagnetic theory of moving bodies. These ranged from inductionthroughthe Fizeau experimentto the dynamics of the electron, and amongst them Laue accorded the Michelson-Morley ether-driftexperiment a particularimportancebecause of the second-orderlevel of its Therewas an important point enquiryand its role in the developmentof Lorentz's work.69 to reviewing the whole series of experiments:to emphasize that a scientific deed of the first degree would be requiredto explain such apparentlycontradictory results from one point of view. Laue's second chapterpresenteda highly revealing "HistoricalOverview" before giving an account of two principalpredecessorsof relativity,describingtheir successes and failures in relation to the different experimentalfindings. Only in the third chapterdid Laue enter into an extended treatmentof relativity.70 The general importanceof a historical frameworkto Laue's text will be evident from
67 Given the importanceof Minkowski's work in persuadingSommerfeld of the value of relativity, and his ongoing development of Minkowskiantechniques, it is interestingthat despite Minkowski's emphasis on the radical and original natureof his concern with space, Sommerfelddid not see the Gottingenmathematicianas having put relativity on a fundamentallynew footing. A similarly appreciativebut selective approachto Minkowski was taken by convinced relativists close to Einstein, such as Planck and Laue, and by those physicists closest to Minkowski himself, such as Max Born, who used Minkowski's formalism in his development of a rigid-body model of the electron but did not propagateMinkowski's use of the term "worldpostulate"for the principleof relativity,for example. 68 (Braunschweig:Teubner, 1911), pp. v-vi. Max Laue, Das Relativitdtsprinzip 69 Laue built on an importantearlier review by Jakob Laub, "Uber die experimentellenGrundlagendes ReJahrb. Radioak.Elek., 1910, 7:405-463. He describedthe negative result of the Michelsonlativitatsprinzips," Morley experimentas having pushedLorentzto a new hypothesisalreadyleading towardthe theoryof relativity. For this reason, he wrote, "the experimentbecame the fundamentalexperimentfor the theory of relativity;as almost directly from it." This justified Laue in one also attainedthe derivationof the 'Lorentztransformation' giving a more detailed discussion of Michelson-Morleythan the other experimentsreviewed (althoughhe recp. 13. ognized that even then he had made several idealizing simplifications).See Laue, Relativitdtsprinzip, 70 Laue, Relativitdtsprinzip, p. 18. In the third chapterhe discussed first the derivationof the Lorentz transof the transforformationsand Einstein's kinematics,before consideringMinkowski's geometric interpretation mations and setting up the mathematicalapparatus Minkowski had made available as a prelude to treatingthe electrodynamicsof empty space and ponderablebodies-and dynamics-in accordancewith the principle.
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Figure 4. Maxvon Laue (1879-1960). Courtesyof the Deutsches Museum,Munich.
this brief survey. His "Historical Overview" shows in detail the very deliberate-and resonant-sense in which he used both a specific accountof the relationbetween relativity and its predecessorsand a notion of the "historical" dimensions of the theory as powerful resources in conveying an Einsteinian interpretation. Laue began this section with the observation that the fundamentalchanges relativity involved meant that, perhaps more than other theories, it requireda proof of its necessity. Laue allowed that all theories had to find their essential foundationsonly "in themselves and in their relation to the facts." However, while he was certainly confident of the internalconsistency of relativity, he recognized that many others were not reconciled to its theoreticalcontent because of the apparently paradoxicalconsequences of the relativityof time; he was also awarethatthere existed no unambiguous,unique experimentalproof of the theory. Recognizing these difficulties in demonstratingthe theory's necessity, Laue stated that "thereis also, in this
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~ ~
in the summerof 1910. Figure 5. Theboathouse in whichLaue completedDas Relativitatsprinzip Laue commented:"Iwrote[Das Relativitatsprinzip] in a small boathouse thatstood on the shore of the royalparks in Feldafingon piles on the waterof the Starnberger See (UpperBavaria)and commandeda beautiful view of the Herzogstand,Heimgarten, and the mountainsof Benediktenwand, I have never had it so good since."Quotedin ArminHermann, the Karwendel. The New Physics:The Route intothe AtomicAge (Munich/Bonn-Bad Godesberg:InterNationes, 1979),p. 17. Courtesyof
the Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin.
region, a form of historical necessity which lies in the failure of all other attempts to
succeed in reconciling themselves to the facts." Accordingly, he discussed two earlier
approaches
in some detail. The first, Hertz's theory, had sought without success to transfer
the principleof relativityfrom mechanicsto electrodynamics; the second, Lorentz'stheory, had denied the principleof relativityfrom the start,designatingan immovableetheras the basis for all electrodynamics.Laue made it quite explicit that in choosing these forebears for discussion his particularhistory was partialand programmatic, dictatedby the end he had in view.71 This history was also, in his view, essential to the development,acceptance, and understanding of relativity.For Laue the conceptualfoundationson which these predecessors rested were far closer to ordinaryconceptions than the basic ideas of relativity; no one would have proceeded to relativity theory if the previous theories had not been developed and recognized as hopeless. Thus in his account the failures of the past bear the burdenof demonstrating the necessity of relativity. However, entangled as relativity was in this historical background,Laue could not
7 "Nun kann naturlich jede physikalischeTheorie ihre eigentliche Stutze nur in sich selbst und in der Bezugnahme auf die Tatsachenfinden. Immerhingibt es auch auf diesem Gebiet eine Art historischeNotwendigkeit, die in dem Fehlschlagen aller anderenVersuche liegt, zu einem befriedigendenVerstindnis der Tatsachenzu gelangen."Ibid., pp. 18-19; see p. 19 for the purposefulnessof his choices. Admissions regardingthe lack of proof for the theory are made in the foreword:ibid., p. v.
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representthe theoryas completely distinctfrom its forebears.Noting a developmentallink first, Laue wrote that Lorentz's theory in particularhad so preparedthe ground through conceptsthatrelativityowed this predecessormuch of certainfundamental the introduction Then he went on to indicate the formal similarity, credit for its own rapiddevelopment.72 pointing out that in 1904 Lorentz had so modified his theory that it accounted for all observations.Indeed, Laue allowed that an essentially experimentaldecision between the his negotiation Interestingly, extendedLorentzianandrelativitytheorieswas not possible.73 of similarities and differences goes so far as implicitly to reverse the temporalorder of Lorentz's and Einstein's publications. Breaking the developmental link very sharply in service of Einstein's epistemological priority,Laue identifies Lorentz's theory primarily with its pre-1904 version, describing the 1904 paper as so modifying that theory as to approachrelativity. The comparisonhe maintainsis not between "Lorentz'stheory"and relativitybut between the "extendedLorentzian"and relativity theories. Given this comby the end of Laue's discussion of formertheoriesEinstein's 1905 paper plex preparation, could be representedas bringinga decisive solution to the riddles posed by the past in one stroke, througha thoroughgoingcritiqueof the concept of time. Laue handledits relation to Minkowski's laterwork with the assertionsthatthe principleof relativityas he expressed containedthe it, and as it was mathematicallyformulatedin the Lorentz transformation, basis for the theory of relativityin its entiretyand that all the consequenceshe was going to draw in the body of his textbook could be derived from the principle.74 Laue's use of history was multifaceted,subtle, and quite conscious. He was very clear account.He implicitlyrecognized aboutthe partialand legitimatingnatureof his particular a form of (historical)necessity to relthe possibilities of other histories while attributing ativity-one history. A similar point can be made in regard to relativity itself: Laue's complex negotiationof closeness and distanceimplicitly recognizes the possibility of disa form of necessity to many relativities, while attributing tinctly differentinterpretations, one theory. This was certainlynot the first attributionof relativity to Einstein;however, Laue's textbook constitutedthe fullest publisheddiscussion of the relationsbetween Lorentz's and Einstein's work to date, and the original and productivenatureof the account should be emphasized.Einstein had also referredto one theory, but to the merger of the
72 Ibid., p. 19. Here Laue might have been thinking of Einstein's reinterpretation of "local time" as time in general as an example. However, his own papers also show very clearly how the presence of Lorentz's earlier work could be utilized to rapidly advance researchin relativity. In a paper of 1907, for example, Laue stated that the electrodynamicsEinstein derived from the principleof relativitycorrespondedto Lorentz's (old) theory up to the first orderof vlc. This implied that Fresnel's draggingcoefficients could be correctlyderived from the principleof relativity,as had alreadybeen achieved for Lorentz's theory.Laue's purposein his two-page article was to show how much more easily the problem could be solved using the principle than through the other historicaland theory, even with the simplificationsLorentzhad recentlyintroduced.Thus, recognizingparticular conceptual relations with Lorentz's work allowed Laue to demonstratepractical differences of technique and des Lichtes" (cit. n. 36). A similar strategywas hence to extend researchin relativity. See Laue, "Mitfiihrung Ann. followed in Max Laue, "Die Wellenstrahlungeiner bewegten Punktladungnach dem Relativitatsprinzip," Phys., 1909, 28:436-442. While Laue used the relations with Lorentzian theory, Max Born utilized those between Newtonian mechanics and relativityas a guideline for more speculativework. His rigid-bodymodel of in classical mechanicsas a means of extending the electronemployedrelativisticanaloguesof concepts important researchin electron theory and relativity. The attemptwas in partunsuccessful, but the work of both Laue and of relativity and the forBorn indicates a close and productiverelationshipbetween a historical understanding mation of research strategies. The articulationof particularhistorical and conceptual relations was thus by no means merely a matterof pedagogy andjustification. 73 The preeminenceof relativity lay in the fact that as close as the Lorentziantheory came, "it still lacks the great, simple, general principle"that bestowed something so imposing on relativity:Laue, Relativitatsprinzip, pp. 19-20. 74 Ibid., pp. 33, 46.
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Lorentziantheory with the principleof relativity.Minkowski had emphasizedconceptual distinctionsin past theory but focused on a geometricalinterpretation of the "worldpostulate."In contrastto otherdiscussions distributingcredit,Laue undertookextensive critical work to locate the founding of relativityin Einstein's 1905 paper.Making Einstein so unambiguouslythe founder of the theory was part of a strategy to renderone particular readingof relativitynecessary.
CONCLUSION
This survey has shown that physicists used histories of relativity in the service of the articulationof present interpretations, to argue for a variety of general messages, and to provide an understanding of the dynamics of their discipline and shape the development of a new and controversialtheory.In additionto detailednarratives of change andprogress worked drawingon both empiricistand theoreticistthemes, physicists and mathematicians with more flexible accounts:with counterfactual history, historical analogy, and a subtle idea of historicalnecessity. Often expressing-and offering a resolutionto-a significant tension between many relativities and a single theory, their protohistorieshave exhibited a fascinatingdialoguebetween individualinterpretations and the formationof generalized, of communalvoices and have offered both incrementalaccounts stressingthe distribution creditand sharplyindividualizedattributions of discovery.In addition,the particular stories told have disclosed importantaspects of the process throughwhich relativity came to be acceptedin Germany.In some respects these are at odds with the main featuresof present accounts,while in otherrespectswe can recognize antecedentsof the historieswe currently accept. Einstein's expression of continuities indicates a more complex course to the development of distinctions between his own and Lorentz's work than is usually allowed, and his use of the Michelson-Morleyexperimentdemonstrateshis own concern with the establishmentof a generalizedpath to relativity. Laue's endeavor strongly to distinguish Einstein's contributionsfrom othershas been maintainedby many academichistoriansof science, while more recent studies exploringthe point of view of differentphysicists have of the periodakinto the very earliestparticipant tendedto stress a gradualistunderstanding accounts. My own attempthas been to see the propagationof relativity as the work of a community,focusing on the gradualdevelopmentand stabilizationof common views that emerged from the varied and sometimes divergentwork of many individualphysicists. In conclusion, it is appropriate to explore some of the limitationsof this study, itself a receptionaccount. One is culturaland geographical:my restrictionof the investigationto the Germanphysics community. In speaking of "the physicist," Sommerfeldframedhis remarksin generalterms.However, while an Einsteinianreadingof relativityhad by 1911 undoubtedlybecome a secure possession for a small but powerful group in Germany, historicalresearchhas shown thatthis was not the case for the whole of the Germanphysics community (witness Abraham'scontinuedopposition to the theory and Lorentz's preferacaence for an ether-basedtheory)-and it was far less so outside the German-speaking demic network. Andrew Warwick's studies have shown, for example, that in Britain at this time Cambridge-trained mathematicalphysicists incorporatedthe Lorentz transforin mations an electronic theory of matterthat owed no allegiance to the two postulates underlying Einstein's understandingof relativity and took as basic the existence of a dynamicalether. Einstein's researchwas for the most part consideredto be of little rele-
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vance.75For this reason alone, physicists working in these traditionsdeveloped distinctively differenthistoriesof electrodynamics,as the 1953 attribution of relativityto Poincare and Lorentzby the British mathematicalphysicist and historianEdmundWhittakerdemonstrates. (It was in part a reaction against this stance that led to the development of contraryaccountsby physicists and academichistorianswho drew on Germansources in assertingthe centralityof Einstein's role.)76 It is important,therefore,to recognize that at the time they were formulatedthe participantaccounts we have reviewed each had only local-if not simply individual-validity as descriptionsof the developmentof relativity, underthough clearly their very statementcould also furtherthe propagationof particular standings. A second limitation stems from my narrowfocus on a particulargenre and temporal period:participant accounts of relativityitself, from 1905. Here a more extensive study of researchhistoriesin electrodynamicsand otherfields might disclose important information on the integrationof relativityphysics (and its histories) into a variety of alreadyexisting discourses-on electrontheory and the electromagneticworldview and mechanicalexplanations, for example-and indicate the specificity or otherwise of the themes and form of accountswe have observed.This study has shown thatvery soon after 1905 it was possible to interpretelectrodynamicsin terms of a history of the principle of relativity, surely an importantpoint in the developing presentationof relativityas a distinct subject.However, at the same time physicists and mathematiciansalso integratedthe theory into broader narratives,advocatinga range of differentresearchand disciplinaryorientationsand agendas (in this respect, too, relativity was manifold). In regardto researchorientations,the development of a contrastbetween Newtonian (and Lorentzian)and relativistic physics has been shown to have been a particularlyimportantand productive feature of early histories. And we have seen that by 1910, with Planck's Copernicananalogy, participant the historical object had widened from relativityto become the story of a revolutionon a world stage. Finally, withouta broaderexaminationof work on relativityit is not possible to evaluate fully the relation of the historical reasoning and discourse I have discussed to research of earlyresponsesto Einstein's practicesmore generally.77 Nevertheless,both the character paper, with their historical and conceptual contextualizationof Lorentz's and Einstein's work, and the inclusion of explicitly historicalaccountsamongst so many papersthatselfconsciously presentedmajor advances in researchargue strongly for the centrality-and connecessity- of such discourse for the developmentof physics. Further,the particular
75For example, Warwick writes: "Britishmathematicalphysicists did not see Einstein's work of 1905 as a self-contained or self-evident 'theory,' but ratheras a modest extension of work due mainly to Larmorand Lorentz. It was not until Minkowski's work of 1909 that these mathematiciansbecame concerned that there of the status of the principle of relativity, and only after 1911 that might be alternativephysical interpretations they began to respondto the claim thatthe 'theoryof relativity'denied the existence of the ether."A. C. Warwick, "The Electrodynamicsof Moving Bodies and the Principleof Relativity in British Physics, 1894-1919" (Ph.D. diss., Univ. Cambridge,1989), pp. 179-180. 76 Edmund A History of the Theoriesof Aetherand Electricity,2 vols., Vol. 2: TheModernTheories Whittaker, (1953; New York: Harper, 1960), Ch. 2: "The Relativity Theory of Poincare and Lorentz."See also Gerald Holton, "On the Origins of the Special Theory of Relativity,"in ThematicOrigins of Scientific Thought(cit. n. 12), pp. 191-236, on pp. 196-202. 77 This limitation also means that while my approachhas addressedthe temporalasymmetryof concern with Einstein and relativity, I have not here undertakenthe detailed analysis required to provide a treatmentof that is as sensitive to theirbackgroundand motivationsas studies of the better-known Einstein's contemporaries physicist. However, my suspensionof evaluative contrastswith Einstein's work provides an importantfirststep in the direction of addressingthis asymmetry,and my dissertationon Max Born attemptedto establish such a treatmentof that physicist.
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tent of these accounts has demonstratedthat in the early development of relativity, historicalreasoningprovided a key form of conceptualorientation,both at a fine-grained level of detailed conceptual analysis and at the more general level of discussing broader implicationsof differenttechniquesandunderstandings. Ironically,perhaps,the productive role of such participant histories has not always been so readily visible to historiansthemselves.

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On the Histories of Relativity: The Propagation and Elaboration of Relativity Theory in Participant Histories in Germany, 1905-1911 Author(s): Richard

The Propagationand Elaborationof Relativity Histories in Germany, Theory in Participant 1905-1911

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