000 02152nmm a2200193 i 4500
005 20230722112450.0
008 211125s2021 enk|||||o|||||||||||eng|d
020 _a9780191944642
_qelectronic book
_cNo price
082 0 0 _a530.1109$223
100 _aDarrigol, Olivier
_eauthor.
_923350
245 _aRelativity Principles and Theories from Galileo to Einstein :
_cOlivier Darrigol
260 1 _aOxford :
_bOxford University Press
_c2021
300 _a496 p
_billustrations(colour)
520 _aMotion is always relative to something. Is this thing a concrete body like the earth, is it an abstract space, or is it an imagined frame? Do the laws of physics depend on the choice of reference? Is there a choice for which the laws are simplest? Is this choice unique? Is there a physical cause for the choice made? These questions traverse the history of modern physics from Galileo to Einstein. The answers involved Galilean relativity, Newton's absolute space, the purely relational concepts of Descartes, Leibniz, and Mach, and many forgotten uses of relativity principles in mechanics, optics, and electrodynamics-until the relativity theories of Poincaré, Einstein, Minkowski, and Laue radically redefined space and time to satisfy universal kinds of relativity. Accordingly, this book retraces the emergence of relativity principles in early modern mechanics, documents their constructive use in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century mechanics, optics, and electrodynamics, and gives a well-rooted account of the genesis of special and general relativity in the early twentieth century. As an exercise in long-term history, it demonstrates the connectivity of issues and approaches across several centuries, despite enormous changes in context and culture. As an account of the genesis of relativity theories, it brings unprecedented clarity and fullness by broadening the spectrum of resources on which the principal actors drew.
650 _aRelativity (Physics)
_xHistory.
_923351
650 _aRelativity (Physics)$2fast$0(OCoLC)fst01093604
_923352
856 _aOxford Academic
_uhttps://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192849533.001.0001
942 _cEBK
999 _c14093
_d14093