Gazing Into the Relative Past
Came across a great post entitled “The Pre-history of Einstein’s Relativity” over at Skulls in the Stars.
It starts with Galileo and the notions he had to overturn, and progresses through Newton and through to about 1900 1880.
Regarding Newton and relativity,
The first excerpt observes that understandings of space, time and motion that arise from everyday experience lead one to certain ‘prejudices’, or misunderstandings, about the nature of these quantities. In particular, there is a confusion concerning the ideas of ‘absolute’ and ‘relative’ motion. These seem to be the same misconceptions we discussed earlier in the context of Galileo’s work.
Which applies to a whole bunch of physics, especially quantum mechanics, in addition to relativity.
(via Science After Sunclipse)
Added 2-20: next installment, in-depth Newtonian Ralativity
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