Abstract
The historical development of the Theory of Special Relativity offers a rather complicated and confusing impression. At the end of the nineteenth century we find several important philosophical investigations by Ernst Mach and Henri Poincare about the underlying philosophical prejudices of Newton’s theory of space and time and of classical mechanics. In addition, we find important mathematical contributions by Poincare and Lorentz about the structure of space and time. Finally, there was an extensive discussion about the meaning of the Michelson experiment, which was considered – erroneously – by many physicists as an experimentum crucis for the validity of Special Relativity. Actually, the Michelson experiment demonstrates merely the isotropy of the so-called two-ways velocity of light. We will come back to this point later.
Published Version
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