On the Histories of Relativity The Propagation and Elaboration of Relativity Theory in Participant Histories in Germany, 1905-1911

摘要

This essay explores the history and historiography of relativity through a study of the earliest, participant, histories of the subject. The author argues that participant histories from Einstein. Planck, Minkowski, and others provided an important means of shaping understandings of relativity-at a time when the theory was subject to major controversy and debate. One feature of the study is thus a detailed investigation of the use of historical resources in scientific research. Second, the accounts discussed provide a means of surveying the development of relativity in Germany. Here their changing attributions of authorship-and the particular nature of research histories offered by Einstein and Minkowski-reveal features of the relationship between the work of Lorentz, Einstein, and Minkowski that are in some tension with the understanding built up by previous historians. The study therefore offers a new perspective on the complex process through which a plurality of approaches-many relativities with many histories-could become singular-one theory, one history-and through which the work of Einstein came to be sharply distinguished from that of others.