The Einstein Theory and a Possible Alternative

Montague, Wm. Pepperell

doi:10.2307/2179394

Cited by 2 publications

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“…One of his central arguments was a version of the twin paradox, in which one of two twin brothers travels back and forth into space and discovers, upon return, that he has aged less than his stay-at-home brother. Applying the relativity of motion, such that the stay-at-home brother could also be viewed as the one who has been traveling back and forth in the opposite direction, Montague derived the paradoxical conclusion that each twin is younger than his brother (1924, 156). In order to resolve the paradox, Montague proposed an alternative to special relativity built on the assumption that the speed of light is , pace Einstein, affected by the velocity of its source.…”

Section: The Philosophical Reception Of Relativitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In fact, Montague even sketched an experiment designed to test his alternative and called upon the readers of Philosophical Review to help and fund it: “The cost of the experiment might run to $20,000. … Perhaps some of you will be willing to pray that there be sent to me a kind-hearted rich man who will take a sporting chance and put up the necessary funds” (1924, 162).…”

Section: The Philosophical Reception Of Relativitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Reception of Relativity in American Philosophy

Verhaegh

2023

Philos. sci.

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Historians have shown that philosophical discussions about the implications of relativity significantly shaped the development of European philosophy of science in the 1920s. Yet little is known about American debates from this period. This paper maps the first responses to Einstein’s theory in three U.S. philosophy journals and situates these papers within the local intellectual landscape. We argue that these discussions (1) stimulated the development of a distinctly American branch of philosophy of science and (2) paved the way for the logical empiricists, who emigrated to the United States in the years before World War II.

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Section: The Philosophical Reception Of Relativitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Philosophical Reception Of Relativitymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Reception of Relativity in American Philosophy

Verhaegh

2023

Philos. sci.

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The Media of Relativity: Einstein and Telecommunications Technologies

Canales¹

2015

tech

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How are fundamental constants, such as "c" for the speed of light, related to the technological environments that produce them? Relativistic cosmology, developed first by Albert Einstein, depended on military and commercial innovations in telecommunications. Prominent physicists (Hans Reichenbach, Max Born, Paul Langevin, Louis de Broglie, and Léon Brillouin, among others) worked in radio units during WWI and incorporated battlefield lessons into their research. Relativity physicists, working at the intersection of physics and optics by investigating light and electricity, responded to new challenges by developing a novel scientific framework. Ideas about lengths and solid bodies were overhauled because the old Newtonian mechanics assumed the possibility of "instantaneous signaling at a distance." Einstein's universe, where time and space dilated, where the shortest path between two points was often curved and non-Euclidean, followed the rules of electromagnetic "signal" transmission. For these scientists, light's constant speed in the absence of a gravitational field-a fundamental tenet of Einstein's theory-was a lesson derived from communication technologies.

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The Einstein Theory and a Possible Alternative

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

The Reception of Relativity in American Philosophy

The Reception of Relativity in American Philosophy

The Media of Relativity: Einstein and Telecommunications Technologies

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