Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Bangla Kobita


Tomar hater norom patai, ache ek desh ,
She desher nam nai, boyesh nai , shomoy nai,
Ronger bashorer modhye shudhu chonyar khela ,
Koto shopner tari, koto bhalobashar nouka.

Jhokhon shokal ashe , neel gondho mekhe,
Kandher choyae tomar beche uthi,
Bheja chokher mishti mithye khela,
Tomar kache rekhe jabo chabi.

Ghorer kone bandha ache, moner shesh dirghoshash,

Altto hate bhalobesho,
Benche other age , shobuj choker aral theke ,
Shunte pai shudhu tomar thonter hansi .

lines ...maybe a little more..


"Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea, Mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof" V

"The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it's yours. But to win it requires total dedication and a total break with the world of your past, with the doctrine that man is sacrificial animal who exists for the pleasure of others. Fight for the value of your person. Fight for the virtue of your pride. Fight for the essence, which is man, for his sovereign rational mind. Fight with the radiant certainty and the absolute rectitude of knowing that yours is the morality of life and yours is the battle for any achievement, any value, any grandeur, any goodness, any joy that has ever existed on this earth."
John Galt

" You can tell a true war story if you just keep on telling it. And in the end, of course, a true war story is never about war. It's about sunlight. It's about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river when you know you must cross that river and march into the mountains and do things you are afraid to do. It's about love and memory. It's about sorrow.
It's about sisters who never write back and people who never listen..."
The Things They Carried

"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."
Albert Einstein


"Infidel: In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian religion; in Constantinople, one who does."
Ambrose Bierce

"The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend personal God and avoid dogma and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things natural and spiritual as a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description. If there is any religion that could cope with modern scientific needs it would be Buddhism."
Albert Einstein

"The most important characteristic of the Eastern world view- one could almost say the essence of it- is the awareness of the unity and mutual interrelation of all things and events, the experience of all phenomena in the world as manifestations of a basic oneness. All things are seen as interdependent and inseparable parts of this cosmic whole; as different manifestations of the same ultimate reality."
(Capra, The Tao of Physics)



"Civilization has come about by going to school more than to church."
Lemuel K. Washburn

"And Jesus was a sailor
When he walked upon the water
And he spent a long time watching
From his lonely wooden tower
And when he knew for certain
Only drowning men could see him
He said "All men will be sailors then
Until the sea shall free them"
But he himself was broken
Long before the sky would open
Forsaken, almost human
He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone....."
Leonard Cohen

"Over the centuries, we've moved on from Scripture to accumulate precepts of ethical, legal and moral philosophy. We've evolved a liberal consensus of what we regard as underpinnings of decent society, such as the idea that we don't approve of slavery or discrimination on the grounds of race or sex, that we respect free speech and the rights of the individual. All of these things that have become second nature to our morals today owe very little to religion, and mostly have been won in opposition to the teeth of religion."
Richard Dawkins

"My point is not that religion itself is the motivation for wars, murders and terrorist attacks, but that religion is the principal label, and the most dangerous one, by which a "they" as opposed to a "we" can be identified at all."
Richard Dawkins

"I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms."
Albert Einstein

"My darling. I'm waiting for you. How long is the day in the dark? Or a week? The fire is gone, and I'm horribly cold. I really should drag myself outside but then there'd be the sun. I'm afraid I waste the light on the paintings, not writing these words. We die. We die rich with lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we've entered and swum up like rivers. Fears we've hidden in - like this wretched cave. I want all this marked on my body. Where the real countries are. Not boundaries drawn on mapswith the names of powerful men. I know you'll come carry me out to the Palace of Winds. That's what I've wanted: to walk in such a place with you. With friends, on an earth without maps. The lamp has gone out and I'm writing in the darkness."
Katherine, The English Patient

"When the Washington Sentinels left the stadium that date, there was no tickertape parade, no endorsement deals for sneakers or soda pop, or breakfast cereal. Just a locker to be cleaned out, and a ride home to catch. But what they didn't know, was that their lives had been changed forever because they had been part of something great. And greatness, no matter how brief stays with a man".
The Replacements

"Sometimes it would stop raining long
enough for the stars to come out.And then it was nice.It was like just before the sun goes to bed down on the bayou.There was always a million sparkles on the water.Like that mountain lake.It was so clear, Jenny,it looked like there were two skies
one on top of the other. And then in the desert,when the sun comes up,I couldn't tell where heaven stopped
and the earth began..."
Forrest Gump

"No, Jonathan, there is no such place. Heaven is not a place, and it
is not a time. Heaven is being perfect."
"You will begin to touch heaven, Jonathan, in the moment that you
touch perfect speed. And that isn't flying a thousand miles an hour, or a
million, or flying at the speed of light. Because any number is a limit,
and perfection doesn't have limits. Perfect speed, my son, is being
there."
from Jonathan livingston seagull




"your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself being true to anyone else or anything else is is not only impossible , but the mark of a fake messiah"
From the Messiah's Handbook(Illusions)

“And in that study of the history of the human mind, in that study of ourselves, of our true selves, India occupies a place second to no other country. Whatever sphere of the human mind you may select for your special study, whether it be language, or religion, or mythology, or philosophy, whether it be laws or customs, primitive art or primitive science, everywhere, you have to go to India, whether you like it or not, because some of the most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India, and in India only.”
- Dr. Friedrich Max Mueller

"Reason, Observation and Experience -- the Holy Trinity of Science -- have taught us that happiness is the only good; that the time to be happy is now, and the way to be happy is to make others so. This is enough for us. In this belief we are content to live and die. If by any possibility the existence of a power superior to, and independent of, nature shall be demonstrated, there will then be time enough to kneel. Until then, let us stand erect."
Robert G. Ingersoll

"The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church."
Ferdinand Magellan

"The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights, cannot claim to be defenders of minorities".
Ayn Rand

"If I were to speak your kind of language, I would say that man's only moral commandment is: Thou shalt think. But a 'moral commandment' is a contradiction in terms. The moral is the chosen, not the forced; the understood, not the obeyed. The moral is the rational, and reason accepts no commandments."
Ayn Rand

"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
Nietzsche "The Dawn"

"Sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great.
You can be that great generation."
Nelson Mandela



"My 41 -foot-long painting
of the ocean's horizon...I have of late been pondering
that painting.
It has struck me to view
the ocean as the past...
...the sky as the future...
...and the present as that thin,
precarious line where both meet. Precarious because as
we stand there, it curves underfoot...
...ever-changing..."
Bo,Off the Map

"The continually progressive change to which the meaning of words is subject, the want of a universal language which renders translation necessary, the errors to which translations are again subject, the mistakes of copyists and printers, together with the possibility of willful alteration, are of themselves evidences that the human language, whether in speech or in print, cannot be the vehicle of the Word of God. The Word of God exists in something else."
Thomas Paine, Age of Reason

"My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute".
Atlass Shrugged - Ayn Rand

"Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth, more than ruin, more even than death...Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man."
Bertrand Russell

"The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by "God" one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying... it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity."
Carl Sagan

" What a dream I had
Pressed in organdy
Clothed in crinoline
Of smoky burgundy
Softer than the rain.
And when you ran to me, your
Cheeks fleshed with the night
We walked on frosted fields
Of juniper and lamplight ..."
Simon and Gafunkell

"Ain't no angel gonna greet me
It's just you and I my friend
And my clothes don't fit me no more
I walked a thousand miles just to slip this skin.."
Bruce Springsteen

"They say , they built the traintracks over the Alps between Vienna and Venice before there even was a train that could make the trip, they built it anyway.....they knew one day a train would come..any arbitrary turning along the way and i would be elsewhere , i would be different...what are four walls anyway, they are what they contain ....the house protects the dreamer..."
Francesca, Under the Tuscan Sun

"Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror..."
V

"I will have poetry in my life. And adventure. And love. Love above all. No... not the artful postures of love, not playful and poetical games of love for the amusement of an evening, but love that... over-throws life. Unbiddable, ungovernable - like a riot in the heart, and nothing to be done, come ruin or rapture. Love - like there has never been in a play..."
Viola - Shakespeare in Love

"When it comes to a choice between two evils, I always choose the one I haven't tried before."
Mae West

" Sam: It's like in the great stories Mr. Frodo, the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn't want to know the end because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end it's only a passing thing this shadow, even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines it'll shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you, that meant something even if you were too small to understand why. But I think Mr. Frodo, I do understand, I know now folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going because they were holding on to something."
Lord of the Rings

Monday, November 06, 2006

The Philosophical and Sociological motivations for Relativity and Einstein’s Creative Empiricism



The deterministic world view of force at a distance between point particles from the Newtonian era was the accepted view of reality in the realm of physics. Faraday, Lorentz and Maxwell with their ideas of electrodynamics and field theory of forces posed a conceptual and practical problem to Newtonian mechanics. During the last decades of the 19th century and the first decade of the twentieth century, Newtonian mechanics and Maxwellian electrodynamics were in constant conflict with each other. Even as most scientists were adhering to one side or the other, Albert Einstein came up with the theory of Special relativity combining the two ideologies. He followed it with General relativity which revolutionized Newtonian gravitation and laid down the fundamentals for the modern understanding of space and time. This paper explores the philosophical and sociological roots of relativity and the nature of the scientific community within which the view of the relativistic world was conceived. An attempt is also made at understanding Einstein’s creative empiricism and his unique approach to doing science.
A proper understanding of the ideological constructs that led to the breakdown of the Newtonian deterministic world view is essential in grasping the motivations that created the need for the relativistic world view. Even before Faraday and Maxwell’s ideas of “force as a field” and the treatise on electromagnetism, intellectuals were discussing the absurdity of the absolute space construct. George Berkeley regarded widely as the father of modern idealism said, “there was indeed no real knowable object behind one's perception, that what was real was the perception itself” (Wikipedia), therefore “for Berkeley it was absurd that space could be anything but relative” (Cushing). This concept of a subjective sensory frame of experience being the only acceptable truth wasn’t the accepted idea in 17th century science; however in another 150 years it would become the avant garde of physics. However due to Newton’s draconian hold on the scientific establishment for almost a century after his death the growth of the understanding of force and motion strayed little from the conventional view. The discovery of “lines of force” and more importantly the synthesis of electricity and magnetism proved to be the nemesis of Newtonian mechanics.
The real challenge to Newtonian Ideology came from Maxwellian electrodynamics. As presented by James Clerk Maxwell, forces instead of affecting the accelerations of objects (as propagated by Newton), affected their velocities. Thus electrodynamics postulated the existence of a finite velocity of propagation. This was the velocity of light. Maxwell’s equations posed major philosophical and scientific problems which Newtonian mechanics could not account for. The only way to settle this dispute was “to interpret Maxwellian electrodynamics as a theory which presupposes the existence of the aether, states of the electromagnetic field being states of the aether” (Maxwell). Even though the ad-hoc concept of the aether helped Maxwell understand electromagnetism it was experimentally refuted and proved to be useless in understanding the propagation of the continuous electromagnetic field. Thus the fundamental problem in 19th century physics was the mutual disagreement between Newtonian dynamics and Maxwellian electrodynamics. The institutional change which created a unifying system of ideology that formulated both schools of thought was brought about by both physicists and philosophers.
Immanuel Kant, arguably the greatest German philosopher of the enlightenment, published A Critique of Pure Reason in 1781. In it Kant made a divergence between empiricism and rationality. According to him the reality that was available to us was simply our perception of what the true nature of reality was. Therefore logical explanations of truth proved nothing until empirical sensory data confirmed its existence. A universal world view which created subjective reality based on the nature of the observer was influential in the development of relativity. Thus Kant’s ideas affected the perception of space, motion and most importantly time. The roots of simultaneity which was the “very starting point of special relativity” (Gödel) came from Kantian ideals that “deny the objectivity of change and consider change as an illusion or an appearance due to our special mode of perception” (Gödel) Other than providing the nature of thought and reality within a rather broad frame of understanding Kant’s contributions to the specific development of relativity is negligible. Kant’s writings which became fundamental to the western philosophical structure, deeply affected an Austrian boy born to a tutor in the village of Moravia.
Ernst Mach, born in 1838 in Austria, was the forerunner of the theory of relativity. A student of little promise he barely passed school and “complained to his father of the tedious religious exercises” (Feuer). Mach viewed the history of ideas as changing myths of reality and believed that the time had come when “a dynamic mythology was overcoming a mechanistic” (Feuer). According to Mach, time and space were the “devourer” and the “separator” respectively and it was time for a change of their basic natures. Mach’s rather poignant childhood memories and subsequent forays into the practice of loneliness evoked in him the desire to conceptualize “the relativized world in which there was no privileged frame of reference, no absolute...” (Feuer). Mach and his followers were phenomalists – they depended on natural phenomena to help them construct the true nature of truth and reality. Thus for Mach the world was a “coherent mass of sensations” (Feuer). As a scientist and thinker Mach believed in simplicity and always tried to find the least complex answer to a problem (hence his disregard for the atomic theory). Europe during the last decade of the 19th century was enthralled by Machian ideals of scientific knowledge. The new generation of scientists was essentially enraptured by the Machian ideology which according to them complemented Karl Marx’s concept of social change. Since reality was “social forms for organizing experience”(Feuer) and not objective as the older world view propagated, the Marxists found that Machian beliefs would help them discover “a new scientific truth , a new social form for organizing experience”(Feuer). Another redeeming factor of the Machian school of thought was its critique and dismissal of absolute space and time which ran parallel to the Marxian conceptual expulsion of “unobservable (and) idealistic principles from social science”(Feuer). Even as the Austrian school of science was entering a period of revolutionary growth the writings of an English philosopher were taking the more conservative English scientific establishment by storm.
David Hume was the fountainhead of the English and Scottish enlightenment. His propagated style of approaching knowledge was called “skepticism”. However it was his Treatise on Human Nature which most affected the growth of the relativistic school of thought. As propagated by Hume, “time and space are not to be regarded as self-subsistent entities; rather one should speak of the temporal and spatial aspects of physical processes”(Stachel). Therefore his ideology almost mirrored the one taught by Mach. Hume’s statement that “time is nothing but the manner, in which some real object exists"(Stachel), was instrumental in providing a fundamentally new outlook on time.
Even though Hume and Mach were influential in providing an epistemological and conceptual framework for the construction of relativity they failed to provide concrete and specific arguments that would help unify the Newtonian world with the newly established Maxwellian ideas of electromagnetism. Mach propagated for a total rejection of Newtonian ideals of space, time and motion. Thus the two descriptions of reality were in conflict and there seemed to be little done in the manner of synthesis. The scientific community needed a theory or a set of laws that would be able to explain Newton’s laws of motion which had seemed to work so precisely for so long while maintaining the integrity of Maxwell’s laws which had been immaculately proven by empirical data. Two people provided the creative assimilation that was required for this endeavor. However just one of them is truly attributed as the author of the theory of special relativity. It is interesting to debate and analyze why the “other” isn’t. The controversy surrounding the true creator of special relativity mirrors the great argument that marred the discovery of calculus.
The credit for coming up with the system of “fluxions” or calculus is usually given to Newton , however Leibniz, as contemporary research has shown. deserved just as much renown and acceptance. A similar situation developed around relativity between French mathematician and philosopher Henri Poincare and Jewish physicist Albert Einstein. Even though devoid of the unprofessional acts of abuse which Newton employed against Leibniz, there is definite lack of recognition involved in this situation. At the International Congress of Arts and Sciences in 1904, more than a year before Einstein’s revolutionary paper was published, Poincare “used the expression ‘the principle of relativity’” (Feuer). Poincare had at this address had mentioned the finite and unsurpassable value of the velocity of light being central to the theory of relativity, expressed a need to create “electrodynamics of moving bodies”(Keswani) and pointed out that such a theory would utilize the Lorentz transformations. He had even described the same “light and clock” experiments that would later appear and be immortalized by Einstein’s paper. More importantly in the June of 1905, before Einstein’s paper had been published, he “discovered a complete covariance between Maxwell’s equations under Lorentz transformation including correct transformational formulae for the case when space for which Maxwell’s equations are given is occupied by electric charges” (Keswani).Another interesting and vital point Poincare suggested was that the effects of gravity “were propagated at the velocity of light” (Keswani). However Poincare’s publications in this field go back to his publication of Science and Hypothesis(1902), in which he talks about the “theory of relative motion” (Keswani) In the light of this revelation about Poincare and the factual evidence of his work it seems conducive to agree that he deserves to be just as celebrated as Einstein. The question remains why wasn’t he?
The answer exposes a rather subtle yet crucial difference in ideology and attitude which makes the final difference. Poincare believed that fundamentally the lack of sufficient human ability to understand natural phenomenon led to the “Invariable relativity” (Feuer). He regarded relativity to be only “empirically true of uniform motion, but not absolutely true” (Keswani). Therefore it was possible that with added learning and newer perspective this idea about the nature of space and motion would change. Therefore Poincare exhibited pure Kantian ideals of reality being merely a construct of our idea of what was actually real. Due to our inadequacy in evaluating observable phenomenon and discrepancies that arose as a result of the subjectivity of the observer, the theory of relativity was needed. This was a very different view of relativity from the one that Einstein possessed, for him the principle of relativity “became a foundation, an ultimate, underived fact of the physical world” (Feuer). In essence relativity to Einstein was a basic principle which had to be followed under all circumstances, even if that meant a re-invention of the existing fundamentals of science. Thus even as relativity became synonymous with the revolutionary new view of the physical world for Einstein , Poincare was still tied to older more restraining concepts of Newtonian dynamics. In Poincare’s agnosticism towards the theory of relativity lay his central nature – “he was a man of the establishment” (Feuer). Tied to constitutional ideals of learning and knowledge he found it a lot harder to change his philosophical outlook to correspond with his incredibly brilliant and progressive work in the pure natural sciences. Added to the philosophical limitations that afflicted Poincare was the lack of a social climate conducive for the growth of relativity. Even as social upheavals and dynamic revolutionary ideas were infused within the Zurich-Berne group of scientists , a “classical Voltairean skeptic”(Feuer) like Poincare was socially bereft and often politically and institutionally stifled by the “French Administrations centralized control”(Feuer), the draconian relationship shared by students and professors in France and “the gerontocracy in the Academy of Sciences”(Feuer). The Polytechnic represented a very different atmosphere. It was pregnant with ideas of social and ideological revolution and also had the advantage of being kept on their feet by constant arguments and threats from the existing and more traditional world view. In more ways the stage was set for a young, passionate and dynamic physicist to publish the single most important work in the history of science.
Einstein was 26 years old, full of rebellion and ready for a “brave new world”, when he wrote the four papers in 1905 that would forever change the nature of scientific thought. Most intellectuals of the early 20th century believe that three of those papers – On Brownian Motion, the Photoelectric effect and Special Relativity – were individually worthy of Nobel Prizes. However it is ironical that his Noble Prize achievement was on the Photoelectric effect which being a quantum field idea would be something that would disturb him in the future. It should be noted however that among the people on the Nobel committee that awarded him the prize was Lorentz, who believed that Poincare was the rightful source of special relativity, thus due to his non-assent the committee finally awarded Einstein the prize for Photoelectric effect. Being a part of the Austrian Machian school of thought, Einstein was influenced by the empirical rationalists like Kant and the positive empiricists such as Hume, however ideologically it was Mach who altered Einstein’s view of the physical universe. Lorentz, Maxwell and Poincare were the more scientific influences and Einstein paid credit to every one of them later on in his life. Einstein’s greatest achievement was possibly moving past a more conservative one sided idea of understanding and doing science. Thus he unified the old with the new – Newtonian mechanics with Maxwellian electrodynamics – and created system of thought that was a modified version of the two existing ones. This has been called “aim-oriented empiricism” (Maxwell) by scholars.
Aim-oriented Empiricism finds its motivation in developing a scientific theory from using existing ideologies in order to create a practical foundation for the construction of a fundamental physical law. The beginning of this form of empiricism is with Einstein’s formulation of the theory of special relativity. Standard empiricism does not allow for the development of “radically new physical theories that are incompatible with existing theories” (Maxwell). Therefore in order to create a system that can rationally asses a unified theory aim-oriented empiricism was created by Einstein. Due to its nature Special relativity is a “law of laws”, thus it is by itself a “heuristic and methodological rule to be employed in discovering and assessing physical theories” (Maxwell). By coming up with special relativity Einstein conceptually changed a restricting principle – Galilean invariance – to make it compatible with Maxwellian electrodynamics and “he formed a new principle i.e. Lorentz invariance”(Maxwell), thus he created a set of rules that could be used to rectify other rules. While constructing General relativity aim-oriented empiricism helped him unify Newtonian gravitation and special relativity. However due to the nature of normal empiricism when comparing position and Lorentz invariance, only the former is allowed a significance of actual rule , while the later is just viewed as a theoretical construct in physics. This portrays the rather stringent and linear set of rules that govern the principles of standard empiricism and further support the need for an aim-oriented empiricist approach.
A better understanding of the factors that led to the final moment of genius during which Einstein came up with the theory of special relativity is achieved by analyzing the social, philosophical and above all ideological climate that existed in that era. Conceptually relativity seemed to always have been a part of the traditional consciousness but somehow had never gotten a scientific expression. Reflecting the true nature of its creator relativity would have repercussions in not just physics but in essentially every segment of human society. In retrospect it seems that special relativity owes its formal coming to being to not just one person, but to an atmosphere and an era that was ready to break away from the religious drudgery of the past and move onto an ideological plane that was socially equitable and did not propagate the existence of absolute postulates. Along with the conventional rigid ideals of space and time it also meant liberation from the politically and religiously suffocating fabric of western society. The torch bearers of the movement were the new generation that was infused with the revolutionary new ideas of existence and thus provided for a conclusion to the alternative line of thought that had been started by George Berkeley as an opposition to the religiously motivated and naturally hegemonic Newtonian world view that had arrested growth of the western ideology for nearly a century.











Bibliography

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Einstein and the Generations of Science, Lewis s. Feuer, Basic Books, New York, 1974

Albert Einstein – Philosopher and Scientist, the Library of Living Philosophers, Cambridge University Press, London, 1949

Albert Einstein – A Biography, Abrecht Folsing, Viking Penguin Books, New York, 1997

Physics and Philosophy – the Revolution in Modern Science, Werner Heisenberg, Harper and Brothers, 1958

G. H. Keswani, “Origin and Concept of Relativity (I)”, the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, the British Society for the Philosophy of Science, 1965

Nicholas Maxwell, "Induction and Scientific Realism: Einstein versus van Fraassen: Part Two: Aim-Oriented Empiricism and Scientific Essentialism”, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science , Vol. 44, No. 1 (Mar., 1993), pp. 81-101

W. Gordin, “The Philosophy of Relativity”, the Journal of Philosophy , Vol. 23, No. 19 (Sep., 1926), pp. 517-524

John W. Lenz, “Hume's Defense of Causal Inference”, Journal of the History of Ideas , Vol. 19, No. 4 (Oct., 1958), pp. 559-567

Mendel Sachs, "On the Mach Principle and Relative Space-Time”, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science , Vol. 23, No. 2 (May, 1972), pp. 117-119


M. N. Macrossan, "A Note on Relativity before Einstein”, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science , Vol. 37, No. 2 (Jun., 1986), pp. 232-234


Carlo Giannoni, "Einstein and the Lorentz-Poincaré Theory of Relativity”, PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Vol. 1970 (1970), pp. 575-589

John Stachel, “What Song the Syrens Sang': How Did Einstein Discover Special Relativity?", Einstein from "B" to "Z", (Boston: Birkhäuser, 2002), pp. 157-169

Frank Wilczek, “Total Relativity- Mach”, Physics Today, March 2004
www.Physicstoday.org

www.wikipedia.org