Talk:Relativity priority dispute/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Archive 5

Mach

I haven't read through this whole article yet... too busy. But I would like to point out one thing I noticed right away: the article seems to attribute the idea that absolute space and time do not exist to Poincare. Ernst Mach suggested as much in 1883 and this was generally well-known. Einstein was heavily influenced by Hume and the positivism of Mach, as he himself admitted. Of course, Mach did not in any way "prove" or seven set out to prove the idea. Neither did Poincaré. --Lacatosias 14:25, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

If you can find a reference to where Mach said that, that would be most appreciated! --Alvestrand 09:41, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

It's in Die Mechanik in ihrer Entwicklung Historisch-kritic dargestelt (1883). In the Italian translation "La Mechanica nel suo svillupo storico-critico" (The historical-critical developement of Mechanics), the clearest statement is in Chapter 2.6, p. 241-242:

A motion can be uniform only in relation to another. The problem of whether a motion is uniform in itself is meanningless. In the same way one cannot speak of "absolute time" (independent from every change). In fact this absolute time cannot be compared with any motion, and therefore has no practical or scientific value. No one can claim to know anything with respect to it. It is therefore a useless "metaphysical" concept. (his emphasis).

He then goes on to explain that it can be proved by psychology, etc.... that man owes his temporal representation to the mutual dependence of things...we arrive at our representation of time through the existing relation between the content of of our memory and the content of our actual perceptions.

He defends his phenomenalism and then criticizes Netwon's thought experiments to demonstrate the existence of absolute motion. "All" of the masses, "all" of the speeds, therefore all of the forces are relative. There is no difference between absolute and relative, which we can grasp with our senses....No one is able to say anything about absolute space and absolute motion, which are pure ideal entities unknowable by experiment.

--Lacatosias 13:43, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

And it was to this work of Mach that Einstein refers in the introduction to the 1915 (1916?) "Foundations of genral theory of relativity". He says something like "an epsitemoligcal objection to Newtonian mechanics noted by Mach" but doesn't give the exact reference. E4mmacro 00:32, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

A possibly related issue is that Poincare never gives me the impression that he thinks his own statements about the principle of relative motion are much more that what everybody knows. Einstein (1905) may have had a similar idea when he stated the "Principle of Relativity" - everybody knows it, there is no need to reference it. E4mmacro 00:32, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

It seems to me that one needs to keep in mind in all of this discussion something that I've only recently come to understand: the standards for (explicit) references and citations were not the same 100 years ago as they are im modern science. It's very easy to sit here and, in hindsight, condemn the practices of Einstein or Poincaré or whomever for not citing the influence of a certain work. As someone put it nicely (I don't reemeber where I read this now but it was one of the references I think): we should be impressed by the relative politeness and tact with which Hilbert, Einstein and the others attempted to settle these diputes when compared to Newton versus Liebnitz (which ended up provoking something close to a war at that time!!). Back then the rule was something like: write a better version than the other and get more powerful friends on your side and you are the inventor of the idea. Yet there is no systematic attempt to diminish the accomplishments of either Newton or Leibniz. Why Einstein? Well, I'm sorry but I can only think of one, horrifying, reason really.--Lacatosias 09:13, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree with the first part. Someone was going on somewhere about the standards now applied at Universities to PhD students. I think that Journal refereeing probably didn't exist in 1905 either (a modern referee would ask for references to Lorentz etc, and explanations of why it was different, which would have saved us lots of trouble). On the other hand, Planck in 1907, redriving E = mc^2 or enthalpy = mc^2, did have many references, according to de Kludde (I do not have the original). E4mmacro 19:48, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't think you can quote different standards here. Look at the Poincare or Planck papers, or even at Maxwell's paper publishing the field equations. They have lots of references, although they sometimes only name the person, without identifying the article. As far as I can judge this based upon the old articles I have seen, not naming the authors of ideas you are using was not usually accepted even then. --De kludde 09:06, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

I assume the only reason you can think of is anti-semitism? Poincare appears not to be anti-Einstein (writes him a good job reference) but nevertheless never acknowledges his relativity work. A review of Whittaker's book makes a good case that Whittaker is not anti-Einstein (praises Einstein in many ways), but that Whittaker is just anti-"the interpretation given to relativity by Einstein" (Whittaker wants to show an aether theory is just as good). i.e there is a possibility that people just do not like the theory (or even the word relativity for its various connotations) but it doesn't follow that they are anti-semetic, does it? Einstein was fairly anti-"Copenhagen interpretation" but that doesn't make him an anti-Danite. Some (or many) anti-relativists are anti-semetic. A is a anti-relativist. Therefore A is .... E4mmacro 19:48, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

If we were only talking about the theory of special relavity OR only talking about the theory of general realtivity OR only talking about the field equations for general relativity OR only talking about E=mc2 OR only talking about something else that Einstein has been accused of plagiarizing, then I would agree with you. But it's rather obvious, to me anyway, that there are a number of participants in these discussions and many of the sources tthat tey cite, who are disputing Einstein's claim to have invented ALL of these things. This is morally dubious and completely unjustifiable behavior (why isn't there such a movement to discredit all of the work of Newton or Liebniz)) which brings into play the question of their motives. As a friend of mind has recently put it bluntly, there are an enormous number of cranks on the Wikepedia who can't get an airing for their far-out ideas anywhere else. I'm beginning to suspect they are the majority, in fact.--Lacatosias 09:56, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

The mainstream approach

I thought it might be useful if I outlined briefly what the mainstream histories of science generally make of this priority dispute. I am not referencing any specific sources, nor am I attempting to be definitive, but to give a general overview of the impressions that I, as someone who has read a not-insubstantial amount of academic literature about Einstein. It may be useful as well to people coming to these question for the first time from the RFC/RFA. My impressions might be off, but perhaps they can serve as a general framework for further discussion.

• Einstein and Poincaré and Relativity: Poincaré has been neglected in much of the popular Einstein literature but he has been discussed in detail in the academic literature. The most definitive and recent book on Einstein and Poincaré's work to come out (Galison's Einstein's Clocks, Poincaré's Maps) discusses in detail the overlaps and differences between the two. Everybody knows that Poincaré's work on simultaneity was almost undoubtedly an inspiration for Einstein, however pains are taken to emphasize that Einstein and Poincaré had entirely different interpretations of what the ultimate consequences were. Nobody to my knowledge frames it as a straight priority dispute; they were both working on similar problems and came up with some similar concepts and formulations, but Poincaré had an entirely different program than Einstein and never embraced the latter's SR at all. The literature uses their work as a way to contrast between "classical" and Relativistic physics, and also to show how practical considerations of time-synchronization were present in both of their individual lives (Poincaré in his government work, Einstein in his work at the patent agency). The only major contingent that frames it as a priority dispute as of recent seems to be some nationalist groups in France, but they are not taken seriously at all by historians of physics. This should probably not be mentioned much in the main Einstein article (Poincaré should be noted as an important figure in physics at the time), but probably should be discussed a bit in the Poincaré article.
• Einstein and Hilbert and GR: This is sometimes discussed as a priority dispute over the field equations, primarily because the scientists in question framed it that way for a time. However the dispute is usually regulated to specifically the priority of the field equations, not the priority of GR as a whole. The correspondence between the two is usually discussed as part competition, part collaboration. This should probably be mentioned briefly in the Einstein article, with a little bit more discussion in the Hilbert and GR articles.

Fastfission, it is sometimes difficult to determine what the mainstream approach says. In the case of the field equations, it might still be the opinion that Hilbert and Einstein worked independently, and that Hilbert obtained his result somewhat earlier. For instance, according to Winterberg this is the view presented by Stephen Hawking in the millennium issue of time magazine. For me, however the assertion that Hilbert and Einstein worked independently is untenable because of Einstein's November 18 letter to Hilbert and his November 25 letter to Zangger, and the motivation of Corry/Renn/Stachel for writing their famous (infamous?) paper was to defuse the suspicions of PLAGIARISM against Einstein which might be caused by this fact. See their article's text, where they discuss this, as opposed to the title, which only mentions the priority issue (which, in this form, indeed never existed). --De kludde 11:51, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

• Einstein and other's priorities to E=mc^2: I've never seen this discussed as a serious priority dispute in modern histories of physics. Should not be included on the Einstein page in any great degree.
• Einstein and Lorentz: A similar situation to that of Poincaré. Seeing this as a priority dispute misses the entire point about what Einstein was doing, and confuses the historical issues. Lorentz saw his contractions as a way to preserve the aether from the implications of Michelson-Morley; Einstein used them explicitly as a way to destroying the need for the aether. Not regarded as a priority dispute at all from what I read of it.

Again, I don't mean these to be definitive, but I wanted to try and provide a more balanced and sober look at these than our POV-pushing friends have been able to. I also fear that in response to the POV-pushers, editors might be inclined to expunge all reference to certain aspects of these issues (i.e., there should be some mention of Hilbert's part in the the field equations, even though it should not be the POV-pushing version of things) in response. Of course, I might have misread something, and I'm happy for people who know otherwise to provide other thoughts on this. This discussion, again, is in reference only to mainstream and fairly recent works of academic history of science. --Fastfission 19:02, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Well summarized. All the works I've read on the topic (either translations into Italian of one or two English works or works written by "mainstream" Italian scholars in philosophy of physics) concord exactly with these views about the so-called "disputes". In fact, I never knew there were any disputes until reading the Hilbert page and then this page. All of these works emphasize that, to put it simply, Einstein's rejection of the ether was essential to the whole project. Lorentz's intepretation of Michelson-Morley was simply wrong. Einstein developed special relativity as an alternative: it's not the molecules and atoms inside the matter that contract or dilate, it is spacetime itself which deforms. This idea was rejected by almost everyone, including Mach. Lacatosias 08:17, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

A little unfair to Lorentz perhaps. Lorentz (and Heaviside) had shown in the 1880s that a static system of electric charges held together in an equilibrium configuration by static electric froces, would contract to a new equilbrium position if the whole arrangment was set in motion wrt the aether - a physical prediction of Maxwell's equations. Lorentz then spent many years trying to prove it for dynamic systems (charges that were moving, orbiting electrons for example). Larmor (1897) and later Lorentz predicted that these "atomic" clocks would run slow, the new dynamic equilbrium configuration was one in which the orbital period was longer. But, yes it seems different from what Einstein is saying - they were making physical predictions from Maxwell's equations. E4mmacro 01:53, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Isn't it that Lorentz's view has the virtue of being (to some degree) physically comprehensible, whereas Einstein's invariant speed of light postulate is physically unintelligible? Zorba 194.44.154.6 20:37, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

No, Lorentz's view depends on the existence of the ether (shall we go back to phlogiston and other non-existent entities as well). But, to be honest, what I find unintelligible is the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, specifically the absurd but widely accepted notion of complementarity. Sounds like post-modernist rejection of the physical world to me. But that's neither here nor there.--Lacatosias 09:21, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Why is the ether hypothesis inherently inferior to Einstein's postulate of SoL invariance? The former has the virtue of being physically based and gives length contraction an objective, absolute property that is amenable to human understanding. Otoh, Einstein's SoL postulate is inherently unintelligible and in his version of SR length contraction is an apparent phenomenon only. I don't think the comparison to phlogiston is fair because the modern view, that is, Einstein's SR, does not offer anything intelligible simply because the result can be deduced from two principles. I tend to agree that the complementarity is also unintelligible. I still haven't figured out what it really is. Zorba 194.44.154.17 12:57, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Put very simply and quickly: entia non sunt multiplicandum praeter necessitum (also known as Il razoio di Uncle Bill). Of course, speed of light invariance is a postulate and may someday be proved wrong. But it has held up pretty well so far. Ether is a mysterious and useless ontological abstraction. It violates all the principles of Quinian naturalism. Of course, if you disagree with even Quinian naturalism, I don't know what to tell you!! (; --Lacatosias 17:06, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

I have more time to formulate a full response now. In the first place, the SOL invariance postulate is a necessary logical consequence of the rejection of the absolutness of simultaneity. Without it, there is no special relativity theory and hecne no such phenonenon as the relativity of simultaneity. You are not rejecting the ROS, are you? The reason is simple algebra: In Newton's space-time, a ray of light emitted in A and reflected in B travels two different distances $d_{1}$ and $d_{2}$ in the two different inertial systems K1 and K2, in relative motion with the velocity V: $d_{1}\neq d_{2}=d1-Vt$ Since the two observers, in the absolute Newtonian system, agree on the amount of time that has passed from a to b, they must be in disagreement on the speed of light in the two reference systems. If you divide the above formula by $t=t_{b}-t_{a}$ the result is $c_{1}\neq c_{2}=c_{1}-V$ with c1 and c1 being the SOL in K1 and K2 respectively. The principle of SOL invariance requires that c1 and c2 are equal in all inertial systems. Since there can't be agreement on the distance that the light has traveled, it's necessary to change the time that has passed as it is calculated by the different observers. This is the principle of realtivity of simultaneity.

You also asserted that the strange effects of contaction of space and time dilation were only apparent in Einstein's theory.This is a misinterpretation. Actually, since there is no privileged system of reference in special relativity, the question of how long the ruler is or how much time has passed on the clock presupposses an absolute system of reference in which to pass universal judgment. The length of the ruler or the time that has passed on the clock is dependent in the system of referecne of the observer. Inside that system of reference, the time that passes is real and not conventional. You have confused the relativity of simultaneity between systems with the conventionality of simultaneity within the same system. --Lacatosias 15:27, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

You must be an enemy of the Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics, then. --De kludde 09:01, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

I think you miss my point. Postulates can be more or less intelligible from a physical pov. The Principle of Relativity is an example of an intelligible one (based on symmetry), whereas the invariant SoL postulate is an example of an UN-intelligible one. So the choice between Lorentzian and Einsteinian relativity seem to boil down to which poison, or confusion, one finds it easier to live with. Why does the ether violate "all the principles of Quinian naturalism"? Maxwell and Lorentz regarded the ether as a reasonable hypothesis, and so did Einstein. See his Leiden lecture of 1920. Zorba 193.108.45.252 15:34, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

It violates Quinian naturalism because it is not needed in our most successful and useful scientific hypotheses (the ones which the majority of scientists apparently prefer to actually use in their explanations and predictions of phenomena). If it is not needed, in the view of Quine, it simply is not. It may have been a reasonable hypothesis, but it is not an absolutely indispensable hypothesis. Therefore, it is an unnecessary violation of Ockham's razor to continue to invoke it. I understand your point about unintelligibility perfectly. There have been many unreasonable, or unintelligible postulates throughout the history of science: absolute space and time, for example, or atomism. Many of them have resulted in extraordinarily fruitful and fertile research and investigation of nature. I think we are getting a bit off topic here, though.--Lacatosias 18:24, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

The pov you espouse is symptomatic of an unhealthy trend in modern physics -- it has given up trying to explain anything. If one has a set of postulates that fit the data, no matter how bizarre or anti-intuitive, one is content that the job is done. Btw, you need a spell checker. I assume your native tongue is not English. Zorba 193.108.45.233 20:09, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

No, one is content until a new research program, to use a Lakatosian term, has come along and successfuly displaced the previously predominant model of explanation and prediction. The ultimate goal is indeed to try to explain reality as closely as possible,however. For example, there is a fundamental incompatibility between GR and QM. Some scientists (call them the anti-realists) accept and tolerate this , suggesting that it doesn't really matter as long we achieve useful practical results. I don't agree with this. I am convinced that there will eventually be some sort of grand unified theory (string theory is the closest things we have now, but it is almost impossible to verify or falsify its predictions) that will replace both of these theoretical and mathematical approximations with more accurate but still inadequate theoretical and mathematical approximations. In the meantime, though, they seem to be the best we have.

As to spelling, my English is impeccable (I was born and raised in the US) but I don't know how to type and I don't like using spell-checkers when writing comments because it takes too much time. I am much more careful when I actually write or edit articles, on the the hand. --Lacatosias 08:35, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Inconsistently with the Ockham's razor argument, part of "mainstream" has now adopted some kind of physical, absolute Spacetime - which is incompatible with the argument with which the ether was removed. But indeed, most physicists don't even ask the question about physical reality... Harald88 23:11, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Correct Reference?

Olivier Darrigol (2004): "The Mystery of the Einstein-Poincaré Connection". Isis: Vol.95, Iss. 4; pg. 614, 14 pgs

What does "Iss. 4" mean? green 82.207.4.17 20:38, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Issue 4, I think. --Alvestrand 21:33, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

comment

Someone left this comment: I don't think the the White National wiki is noteworthy enough to be a reliable source (even of that particular POV)

Are you pulling my leg or what?? Almost everyone I talk to at over here in soutern Italy, at least, is constantly mentioning the WNW. Every time I open up a book or magazine (specialized, non-specialized, science, philopshy, mathemtics, everything), I canìt avoid running into references to the WNW!! This is big-time stuff, kids. It' almost up there with Carlo Bianco (google) and the neo-monarchic movement to abolish the Risrogimento.--Lacatosias 19:20, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Lacatosias, I would like to point out that the WN Wiki article is GNU FDL, as the normal Wikipedia, and that some contributors (including some defending to conventional view) found it useful and have taken material from it. Fairness and honesty would require linking that article. The only argument against it might be that their math is sometimes (or often) broken, so that things don't display well. This could be fixed by copying the material to my user page, but these pages are not normally linked to an article. --De kludde 11:20, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

No, no, actually I wasn't the one who pulled the reference nor did I even support pulling it in this case. I was just being ironic at the expense of the WNW. People who think they are superior by virtue of race (I don't know for certain if you belong in this class BTW), should be a little more thick-skinned, one would think.--Lacatosias 17:11, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Einstein and plagiarism

I am taking this and the follwoing section from the archive since these two sections of the talk page are ongoing discussions which I would like to continue, which contain reasonable work and which as far as I see are free from personal insults. --De kludde 11:14, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Concerning Einstein and plagiarism, we have Solvay's testimony that Poincaré's reflections on absolute time in La science et l'hypothèse had been discussed in the circle around Einstein and Habicht. This means that Einstein would have been obliged to quote Poincaré in the first two sections of his 1905 Elektrodynamik paper. The same holds for the clock setting procedure, assuming that Einstein knew Poincaré's 1900 paper or the 1904 St. Louis paper. We know that he knew [Poi1900] in 1906. E4mmacro, you make a big issue out of the fact that Einstein worked in isolation. But Bern had a university at that time, and Einstein was almost certainly able to use its library. As Logunov points out (page 142), Einstein wrote reviews for the Beiblätter of Annalen der Physik, the review section of that Journal. Einstein contributed 21 reviews in 1905. According to Logunov, Issue 4/1905 (of 24) contains a review of Lorentz' 1904 paper, and this review contains the Lorentz transformation.De kludde 09:41, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Actually, de Kludde, I said "mainstream opinion" says he worked in isolation. I am always happy to hear of any proof that he didn't. But I am dead against accepting Licorne's imaganation as proof. What is the 1906 reference where Einstein knows of Poincare 1900? E4mmacro 22:40, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

It is [Ein06] in the Relativity priority dispute article. --De kludde 11:53, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

And if you care to track down anotehr lead, I recall somewhere, someone who attended Minkowski's lectures round about 1905 or before saying they studied papers by Lorentz and Larmor (and he may have said Poincare). He went on to say that it wasn't till he read Einstein 1905 that it all becamse clear. I can't remember who said this or where, so it is not much of a lead for you. But Einstein did attended lectures by Minkowski didn't he? E4mmacro 22:48, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

I think Minkowski left Zurich for Göttingen in 1902, so anything Einstein has learned from Mikowki must date from 1902 or earlier. --De kludde 11:14, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

And can't someone check Logunov's statement about issue 4/1905.

I will do so, but can devote only part of my time to this issue. The fact that Einstein published reviews in 1905 is, however, easy to check if one has the Princeton edition of his collected works. --De kludde 11:14, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

For all these reasons, it is not unreasonable to assume the Einstein was familiar with most of the papers of Poincaré and Lorentz on the subject published in 1904 or earlier. Of course, the only case in which we have a clear-cut proof (provided by Solvay's recollections) is Einstein's familiarity with Science and Hypothesis. In principle, Einstein may have overlooked the review of the Lorentz 1904 article, or he may have found his clock-setting procedure independently. But should we really believe this, given the similarity between Einstein's and Poincaré's procedure and the fact that we have a clear-cut proof that Einstein knowingly failed to quote similar work of Poincaré? By "not unreasonable" I mean that a PhD student doing a similar thing would probably be in serious trouble. Most plagiarism guidelines seem to make it easy to convict, according to the Wikipedia article on Plagiarism:De kludde 09:41, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

There is also accidental plagiarism. One case involved a boy whose mother had repeatedly read to him a story as a very small child. Later in life he was writing a story for an assignment, and a story 'came to him', but the story turned out to be exactly that which his mother had read to him as a small child, though he had no recollection of her reading it to him.

However, due to their fear of litigation, many editors refuse to recognize any difference between either simultaneous or accidental inspiration and true plagiarism. In many academic settings intent does not even enter into consideration. Princeton dismisses intent as "irrelevant", and Doug Johnson says that intent is "not necessary for a work to be considered plagiaristic, and as one respondent put it, 'ignorance of the law is no excuse.' (Of course, this is a fallacy, as plagiarism is not even legally recognised as an offence.) Some universities will even revoke a degree retroactively if an alumnus' plagiarism comes to light within a year after graduation.

Note that in Einstein's case we have Solvay's recollections which exclude the cryptomnesia excuse and prove conscious malpractice, while students could easily get into serious trouble for less. If Einstein had been unaware of Poincaré's other articles, he should at least have given him due credit later on. Compare his behaviour, for instance, to Lorentz' willingness to give Woldemar Voigt credit for the Lorentz transformation despite the fact that Voigt's transformation differs from the correct one by a scale factor.De kludde 09:41, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Add to this the Einstein-Hilbert isssue. Regardless of the precise content of Hilbert's November 16 letter, Einstein should have mentioned this letter somewhere in his publications, either to point out the differences between the letter and the final field equations or to acknowledge Hilbert's influence upon his own work. Should we really exonerate someone of plagiarism against so many odds?

Bjerknes is absolutely correct. http://www.xtxinc.com Licorne 13:45, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Why didn't Hilbert give Einstein any credit for what he called "meiner theorie"? Didn't Einstein regularly report his progress on GR at seminars at Gottingen in 1915? Zorba 194.44.154.17 12:31, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Hilbert gave considerable credit to Einstein for the general relativity theory - "die gewalte Problemstellungen und Gedangenbildungen der allgemeine Relativitetstheorie von Einstein" appears in the same 1924 paper that Licorne loves to quote the "meiner theorie" from. Complete text at the reference. Also, when considering the "why didn't he give X credit".... read the Einstein papers - in the one I read, he references NOTHING, and says NOTHING about where the ideas came from. His total focus is on presenting the ideas. --Alvestrand 12:45, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

I was implicitly referring above to Hilbert's original (1915?) paper that contained the field equations. Imo, Einstein had something to be irate about. They both acted foolishly since GR was a joint result, with the help of Grossman. Zorba 194.44.154.17 13:05, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree that I consider GR to be a joint result, but think the field equations are Hilbert's, this is what he means by "meine Theorie". Note that Einstein expressed his ire about Hilbert in a letter to Zangger, written on November 25, 1915. This was before Hilbert's paper appeared in print, and only makes sense if the things Hilbert had sent to him gave Einstein the impression that he had been anticipated by Hilbert. And when Hilbert published the 1924 reprint of his article, Einstein was on the editorial board of the "Matematische Annalen" which printed the paper in volume 84. If he considered Hilbert's formulation as inappropriate, he could have resigned under protest. He left the editorial board after volume 100, several years later, because of a conflict over Brouwer. --De kludde 08:43, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Is there an English translation of Hilbert's 1924 paper on the Internet? If so, it should be referenced in the article. What about the 1915 paper? Zorba 194.44.154.17 13:09, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

On the credibility issue/Whittaker and mc²

E4mmacro, I would like to address some of your complaints against Whittaker. I quote from his passage about $E=mc^{2}$, omitting most of the footnotes: As we have seen, J. J. Thomson in 1881 arrived at the result that a charged spherical conductor moving in a straight line behaves as if it had an additional mass of amount (4/3c²) times the energy of its electrostatic field. At this point, Whittaker adds a footnote to Fermi, Lincei Rend. xxxi₁ (1922) pp. 184, 306 for a paper of Fermi pinpointing the mistake in Thomson's deduction, arriving at the correct value of c^-2) times the energy. In 1900 Poincaré, referring to the fact that in free aether the electromagnetic momentum is (1/c²) times the Poynting flux of energy, suggested that electromagnetic energy might possess mass density equal to (1/c²) times the energy density : that is to say, E=mc² where E is energy and m is mass : and he remarked that if this were so, then a Hertz oscillator, which sends out electromagnetic energy preponderantly in one direction, should recoil as a gun does when it is fired. Whittaker now quotes a 1904 paper of F. Hasenöhrl (1874-1915) considering a hollow box with perfectly reflecting walls filled with radiation, and arriving at an excess mass of (8/3c²) times the energy, which Hasenöhrl corrected to (4/3c²) times the energy in 1905, to which Whittaker adds to comment quoted by Licorne: ... that is, he [Hasenöhrl] agreed with J. J. Thomson's E=(3/4)mc² rather than with Poincaré's E=mc². He then quotes Einstein's famous paper that when a body is losing energy in the form of radiation its mass is diminished approximately (i.e. neglecting quantities of fourth order) by (1/c²) times the amount of energy lost.De kludde 11:13, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

I have previously given some quotes from Poincare 1900. In my opinion Whittaker misrepresnts Poincare's intentions by saying "Poincare ... suggested that electromagnetic energy might possess mass density equal to (1/c²) times the energy density". It is a fine point perhaps, but Poincare said that Maxwell-Lorentz Theory violated the principle of action and reaction becasue it predicted a recoil of the energy emitting device - i.e. Poincare is showing the problems that Maxwell's radiation prissure implies - one problem being that it suggests that something which "obviously" didn't have mass (undulations in the aether) behaved as though it had "fictitious mass". Poincare specifically rejected the notion that this mass was a real mass (the quote is linked above). Whittaker's sentence, in my view is unbalanced in its representation of Poincare's role in the development of E = mc^2. As I have said before, Poincare had no idea what he had here. You only need to read the last chapter of The Value of Science, 1904, to see this. He never mentions e=mc^2 which would solve all the problems he spoke about. If, as you say, Whittaker was correct to ignore Larmor because Larnor didn't know he had derived the Lorentz transformations, then Whittaker would be equally correct to ignore Poincare's e = mc^2. One explanation for Whittaker (apart from ignorance of Poinacre's books) is that he is just anti-Einstein, and this leads him astray occasionally. E4mmacro 05:51, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

I could have quoted this in more detail but don't want to risk a copyright violation. In your above criticism of Whittaker, you claim that Whittaker's sentences are ambiguous enough to make the casual reader think that Poincare had suggested that "mass of a body is a direct measure of its energy content, according to the equation E = mc^2", something Poincare never suggested. This assertion is difficult to defend, in my opinion. Whittaker's comment : that is to say, E=mc² where E is energy and m is mass : (at least as I would read it) simply means that formally integrating Poincaré's proposal for the energy density gives =mc². And Whittaker added this remark not in the intention to mislead his readers but to point out the difference between Thomson's and Poincaré's result, which have a different $\lambda$ in $E=\lambda mc^{2}$. Whittaker is calling it Poincaré's E=mc² in the comment on Hasenöhrl for a similar reason, to point out that Poincaré has $\lambda =1,$ and the reader of Whittaker is not likely to be misled, as Whittaker had given a correct description of Poincaré's statement previously. Of course, it is possible to quote this Poincaré's E=mc² out of context, but Whittaker is certainly not responsible for this. It is, however, correct to claim Whittaker considered Einstein's paper as a mere step in a development of ideas going from Thomson via Poincaré, Einstein and Planck to Lewis. And this is an opinion which I share, since Einstein's result is what one would guess when reading Poincaré's 1900 paper and accepting Lorentz' theory, which Poincaré did by 1905. Whittaker's is diminished approximately in connection with Einstein's work may merit further comment, but I don't have the time for this now and the remark is certainly not germane to the question of whether or not Whittaker tried to obfuscate the difference between Einstein's and Poincaré's version of $E=mc^{2}$.De kludde 11:13, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

The bit of Whittaker that I think shows his sloppiness and unreliability and lack of credibility is where he says that Lewis

"affirmed that the mass of a body is a direct measure of its total energy, according to the equation E = mc^2. As we have seen, Poincare had suggested this equation ...".

While it is technically true that Poincare had suggeested this equation, it is wrong to imply, as I think Whittaker's sentence does, that Poincare had suggested the mass of a body is a direct measure of its energy content. This is something Poincare (1900) did not do. Also the later claim that Einstein's result was a "particular case" (I think Einstein's case was rather general) with no mention that Poincare's case is very particular (restricted to momentum of radiation) again shows Whittaker has odd views. One could almost think Whittaker deliberately wrote this way to take some credit from Einstein and give it to Poincare. But let's just say Whittaker is unreliable, makes mistakes. E4mmacro 23:45, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes, Whittaker is misleading here if he is quoted out of context. I got my information from Whittaker before taking a look at some of the original papers, and I don't remember getting the impression that Poincaré had something different from the virtual fluid stuff. But I think Whittaker is correct to present Poincaré's paper as part of the line of development leading to E=mc². --De kludde 11:45, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

If you compare this to the Wikipedia article on E=mc², it is difficult to see who has a bigger credibility problem: Whittaker, who has given an essentially correct description of how the theory developed (even if you may disagree with his assessment of the relative importance of Einstein's article)? Or the large Wikipedia article, which gives you the impression that $E=mc^{2}$was a totally new result in 1905, whereas in fact at least four authors (Thomson, Poincaré, Hasenöhrl, de Pretto) had published articles with closely related results, save for the different $\lambda$, by 1905? I could also add a comparison with certain assertions of Stachel and friends, but again I don't have the time for this now.De kludde 11:13, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Einstein in 1905 was simply trying to rederive Poincare's E=mc2. -- To De Kludde, Ives' paper said Planck questioned the reasoning in Einstein's derivation. Ives said Einstein's derivation was a tautology, which is something far worse than just a simple approximation. Could you expound on why it was a tautology please, thank you. Licorne 14:03, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

I cannot expound on the Ives issue because I am not familiar with Ives' paper. But in any case I don't think that one can dismiss Ives' view as outlandish, comparable to flat earth. For instance, as Logunov, p. 121 points out that Max Jammer ("The concept of mass in classical and modern physics") accepted Ives' criticism. And of course, Logunov himself also accepts it.De kludde 22:08, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

In any case, it is true that Max Planck considered the reasoning in Einstein's 1905 E=mc² paper to be only approximately valid. In footnote 1 §17 of "Zur Dynamik bewegter Systeme", p. 204 vol. II of his collected works, he points out that Einstein's reasoning is valid "unter der nur in erster Näherung zulässigen Voraussetzung, daß die gesamte Energie eines bewegten Körpers sich additiv zusammensetzt aus seiner kinetischen Energie und aus seiner Energie für ein in ihm ruhendes Bezugssystem" - "under the assumption, which is valid only in first approximation, that the total energy of a moving body is the sum of its kinetic energy and its energy in an inertial system at rest in the body". I think this is absolutely correct. As far as I understand it, the problem here is that, in the classical approximation and for a body composed of many particles with masses m_i, one can identify the difference of $\sum {\frac {m_{i}}{2}}v_{i}^{2}$ and $\sum {\frac {m_{i}}{2}}v_{i}^{(o)2}$ (where the superscript (o) denotes speeds in the inertial system where the body rests) with ${\frac {m}{2}}v^{2}$, formed using the body's mass and speed. For the classical situation, using ${\frac {m}{2}}v^{2}$ and the classical addition of speeds, this is easily seen to be valid, but for relativistic speeds the situation is more complicated. The fact that Einstein lets v tend to zero does not help because the quotient $v_{i}^{(o)}/c$ may still fail to be $\ll 1$. Therefore, Planck's assertion that there is a problem of relativistic thermodynamics which has to be addressed is imho correct. Actually, the result at which Planck arrives, and to which the footnote I quoted refers, is his equation (48)

$M=\left({\frac {G}{q}}\right)_{o}={\frac {R_{o}}{c^{2}}}={\frac {E_{o}+pV_{o}}{c^{2}}}$

where G (called Bewegungsgröße by Planck) is momentum, q is speed, the subscript o denotes values taken at speed zero, and R ("Gibbssche Wärmefunktion bei konstantem Druck") is enthalpy.De kludde 22:08, 27 February 2006 (UTC) ::Einstein's 1905 article was, as far as I know, the first to suggest that E=mc2 applied for ALL mass, not just mass being exchanged by means of radiation. See [Ein05d]. --Alvestrand 16:17, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

And all for all energy, not just radiation. i.e. heat has mass. (And I hope Alvestrand or anyoner is not thinking Poincare 1900 talked of mass being exchanged between two bodies by radiation?). E4mmacro 22:58, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

De kludde: Whittaker's view is not considered the mainstream approach; he is considered eccentric by most historians, and the vast majority of historians of physics and Einstein do not put any truck on the priority issue. See our policy on WP:NPOV, which clearly discusses the importance of giving the consensus view priority. Now I think it would be fine to put a line on the E=mc^2 article about this and note that it is not considered true by most historians, which is, as you will see, exactly what is there, at least in relation to de Pretto. --Fastfission 14:10, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Poincare should be there, not de Pretto. Also, Whittaker is considered the greatest British historian of science of the 20th century. Whittaker called it like it is, he had integrity unlike Fastfission. Licorne 14:22, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Fastfission, I was writing this in response to e4mmacro's earlier criticism of Whittaker. Apparently e4mmacro thought that simply stating that Whittaker "is considered eccentric by most historians" may not suffice, given Whittaker's undoubtedly excellent reputation as a mathematician. I never said that my attempt to address e4mmacro's criticism should occupy a prominent space in the Einstein article. In fact, I never tried to push large changes to the Einstein article on this Wiki. But note that the NPOV states that "Texts that present multiple viewpoints fairly, without demanding that the reader accept any one of them, are liberating." For me, this means that the fact that a dispute exists should not be denied, and the positions should be stated. I think this means that the dispute page should be linked to a place in the Einstein article where people looking for details (other than date of birth/death,...) will find it.De kludde 22:08, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

I would also like to point out that NPOV specifically states that "Facts ... are not Points Of View". That the papers of Thomson (1881) and Poincaré (1900) quoted by Whittaker exist probably is a fact ("a piece of information about which there is no serious dispute."), unless someone wants to claim that Whittaker misquoted them. And that they are part of the history of E=mc² may also be quite non-controversial. I don't know whether e4mmacro (or you) want to disagree here. In this case, it would be a fact that the history of E=mc² started in 1881 and that the article I was quoting, which in its current form has the history of this equation starting in 1905, has to be rewritten.De kludde 22:08, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

It would be most interesting to study Ives's paper, I only have excerpts, I wonder if it is on the internet complete ? ? -- In the excerpts Ives points out that Einstein built in E=mc2 then derived it back out, in other words he derived nothing at all, a tautology. --Einstein just essentially stated what he wanted to prove, namely, Poincare's E=mc2.--Licorne 22:48, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

In other words, your ranting about how Ive's demonstrated that Einstein's derivation of E=mc^2 was just a "tautology", was not based on a study of his detailed argument (assuming it exists) since you had only excerpts of his paper. Is that correct? Zorba 194.44.154.6 20:25, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Can someone please add a reference to the Whittaker they're talking about to the Einstein article and the "disputes" article? "Whittaker (1953)" isn't a complete citation by any metric. The E. T. Whittaker page does not list any 1953 book in his publication list. --Alvestrand 16:17, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

They had the wrong date on Whittaker's page, I put it right, 1953, A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity. Licorne 21:44, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

The bibliographical data, as given by Bjerknes, are Edmund T. Whittaker, A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity, Volume II, Philosophical Library Inc., New York, 1954. Note that it was reprinted in the 1970s (something unusual for the "eccentric" work of a dead man), and it is this version which I have seen in the library.De kludde 22:08, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Here's a reference from the Library of Congress LC Control Number: 85240132 Whittaker, E. T. (Edmund Taylor), 1873-1956. A history of the theories of aether and electricity from the age of Descartes to the close of the nineteenth century [microform] / by E.T. Whittaker. London ; New York : Longmans, Green ; Dublin : Hodges, Figgis, 1910. xiii, 475 p. ; 23 cm. I note it came out in 1910, so maybe his understanding of what Einstein had so recently done was not complete. I notice the title explicitly says "to the close of the nineteenth century" which would exclude Einstein, 1905. GangofOne 02:50, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

It was 1953. -- Licorne 03:03, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Is the 1953 edition a reprint of the 1910 edition, or has it been modified/expanded? I don't see a note about "second edition" in any refs that mention 1953. GangofOne 03:08, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Where did you get this 1910 stuff ? 1953 is the only date I've seen. You may be looking at a typo error somewhere ? Unless he began it as a young man and finally finished it at the end of his life. The 1953 is the important one. Licorne 03:12, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

http://catalog.loc.gov/ GangofOne 03:20, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

OK I see he did do one in 1910, but the 1953 update is the one we all use and quote from. Licorne 03:27, 28 February 2006 (UTC)