Max Planck's Philosophy of Nature and His Elaboration of the Special Theory of Relativity

Abstract

For more than three years after the publication of Einstein's first paper on the theory of special relativity Max Planck was nearly the only physicist of importance who received the new theory with the attention it deserved1 and who immediately and without regard for the generally hesitant response to it by his colleagues applied himself to the exacting task of its elaboration. Almost all of his original con tributions to the theory of special relativity appeared during this brief period. Planck defended the theory although it did not yet agree with experimental results, he encouraged his students to ex amine applications of the theory to a wide range of physical pro cesses, and he wrote several papers in which he brilliantly demon strated the heuristic power of the theory. Planck, then in his late forties, received the theory of special rela tivity with a youthful?if critical?open-mindedness that he did not have for all of Einstein's new ideas. It is well-known, for example, that he long remained skeptical of Einstein's theory of the photo electric effect.2 His receptiveness for special relativity does not mark him as a revolutionary, however. In the present study I shall show that Planck's reaction and early contributions to the theory of spe cial relativity were entirely in keeping with his conservatism, with his views of the nature of physical reality, and with his chief goal in physical research, namely, to uncover and confirm the absolutes of physics. Planck frequently stated in public his metaphysical, epistemologi cal, and ethical views. However, almost all of the addresses and