回复wangyu《也谈洛仑兹、爱因斯坦和狭义相对论（一）》

hooklee

wangyu在看到本人的《关于爱因斯坦和洛仑兹的争论》一文之后，引用《大不列颠百科全书》的相关条目进行了一些考证分析。这种努力值得赞赏，采用的考证方法本人也认同。不过很遗憾，看起来wangyu是在国内，无法访问英文维基百科，否则就不会不引用英文维基上更为丰富的内容，反而去求助《大不列颠百科全书》了。看wangyu文末给出的《大不列颠百科全书》中相关条目的篇幅，和英文维基百科完全不是一个数量级的，怪不得近年来大家都说英文维基百科在数量和质量两个方面都超越了《大不列颠百科全书》。

为了让访问英文维基有困难的新语丝网友也能够看到英文维基关于这个话题的丰富内容，本人把Relativity priority dispute这个维基条目中有关狭义相对论的部分都摘录了出来（见后）。其中的脚注本人已经做过了处理，直接插入了正文。由于新语丝的文本格式无法显示维基百科的列表结构，本人改用阿拉伯数字进行了标记。

基本上我也倾向于认为爱因斯坦是在前人（主要是Poincaré和Lorentz）工作的基础上做出了狭义相对论的工作的，而不是完全孤立地进行狭义相对论的研究工作。如果仔细读下面的文字相信大家应该可以看到不少证据（尤其是Anatoly Alexeevich Logunov书中给出的证据）。实际上，不少论点的正反两方，也都认为爱因斯坦应该是知道前人工作的，不过他们在如何理解这些工作之间的关系上存在争议。作为一个非常极端和偏执的看法，Christopher Jon Bjerknes甚至认为爱因斯坦是不可救药的剽窃者，狭义相对论的功劳应该归于Poincaré。当然，也有人相信爱因斯坦确实不知道Lorentz的工作（主要是指1904年的工作）和Poincaré的部分前期工作（或者所知有限）。需要注意的是，在不少细节问题上即使学界已有主流意见，也还是仍然存在很多争论，而很难说存在一个绝对正确的看法。就目前来看，认为Poincaré和Lorentz至少应该分享部分荣誉，应该是比较主流的共识，这也是wangyu所接受的解释。

其实，本人写《关于爱因斯坦和洛仑兹的争论》一文的用意很简单，就是觉得如果双方都看到维基里面那么详细的信息和学界已经存在的种种争议之后，自然就不会在这个技术性颇强的科学历史问题上做无谓的争拗了。可惜国内对维基进行了封锁，使得本人的《关于爱因斯坦和洛仑兹的争论》一文丧失了这个效果。

顺便说一下，本人是狭义相对论发展史方面的超级门外汉，如果wangyu和mayfly两位网友以后还要继续讨论的话，就不要带上我了：）只是希望这里的信息对大家都能有点用处。

下面是维基百科的Relativity priority dispute关于狭义相对论部分的摘录全文。

Relativity priority dispute
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Albert Einstein presented the theories of Special Relativity and General Relativity in groundbreaking publications that did not include references to the work of others.

Claims have been put forward about both theories that they have been formulated by others before Einstein, and that these people should get the credit. Consequently, Albert Einstein would deserve less credit for these theories, and according to some, even no credit at all for special relativity. This is a different claim than the (obviously true) claim that Einstein was part of a physics community, where he built upon the discoveries of others, and others built upon his discoveries. This article is about differing opinions whether or not Einstein can be considered the true creator of these theories, based on priority issues.

The disputes about these claims are highly controversial and acrimonious; therefore they are here documented as a separate topic.

==The candidates for credit==

The most important names that are mentioned in discussions about the distribution of credit for the development and/or priority of special relativity are Albert Einstein, Hendrik Lorentz and Henri Poincaré, although polemics exist about the contributions of others such as the Italian Olinto De Pretto and Einstein's wife Mileva Mari\'{c}.

...

==Undisputed facts==

The following facts are undisputed:

--Special relativity--

Main article: History of special relativity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_special_relativity)

1. In 1900 Henri Poincaré published a paper in which he said that radiation could be considered as a fictitious fluid with an equivalent mass of m_r=E/c^2. He derived this interpretation from Lorentz's 'theory of electrons' which incorporated Maxwell's radiation pressure. [citation needed] 

2. In 1905 Albert Einstein was the first to suggest that when a material body lost energy (either radiation or heat) of amount E its mass decreased by the amount E/c^2 ([Ein05d], last section). 

3. Poincaré had described a synchronization procedure for clocks at rest relative to each other in [Poi00] and again in [Poi04a-c]. It is very similar to the one proposed by Einstein ([Sta89], p. 893, footnote 10). 

4. Einstein's Elektrodynamik paper [Ein05c] contains no references to other literature. It does mention Lorentz, but only in §9, part II, in connection with the treatment of the electromagnetic field. Poincaré is not mentioned. 

==Disputed claims==

The following things seem to be unclear, unknown or disputed:

Special relativity

...

1. To what degree Einstein was familiar with Poincaré's work 

   It is known that Einstein was familiar with [Poi02], but it is not known to what extent he was familiar with other work of Poincaré in 1905. However it is known that he knew [Poi00] in 1906, because he quoted it in [Ein06]. 

2. Lorentz' paper [Lor04] containing the transformations bearing his name appeared in 1904. The question is whether Einstein was familiar with this paper in 1905, and whether these are the transformations that Einstein was referring to.

3. To what degree Einstein was following other physicists' work at the time. Some authors claim that Einstein worked in relative isolation and with restricted access to the physics literature in 1905. Others, however, disagree; a personal friend of Einstein, Maurice Solovine, later acknowledged that he and Einstein both poured for weeks over Poincaré's 1902 book, keeping them "breathless for weeks on end" [Rot06]

4. To what degree his wife, Mileva Mari\'{c}, contributed to Einstein's work 

...

There are a large number of opinions related to these involving questions of "who should get the credit" - these are not enumerated here.

==Specific debates==

--"Special Relativity" before 1905--

1. In 1887 Woldemar Voigt investigated the Doppler effect for waves propagating in an incompressible elastic medium of propagation and deduced for the first time relativistic transformation relations, which contain the 'Lorentz transformation' as a special case [citation needed]. 

He started from the corresponding partial differential equation. He assumed a wave expression as a solution of it and inserted in the argument the most general form of the Galilean transformation, which accounts for both a rotation of coordinates and a shift in time. The relativistic transformation relations for some special cases he deduced then by subjecting the Galilei transformed wave expression to the partial differential wave equation. Voigt distinguished strictly between transformation relation valid for longitudinal waves and transformation relations valid for transverse waves (such as electromagnetic waves).

2. In 1895 Hendrik Lorentz published a 'first-order' version of the Lorentz transformations, for which electrical and optical phenomena in a moving system were independent of motion if terms of order v2 / c2 could be ignored. In these transformations he introduced the concept of local time. Simultaneous events in the rest frame (having the same time coordinate t) had different time coordinates  [citation needed]. 

3. Joseph Larmor published the correct transformations in 1897 and again in a book in 1900 and was the first to predict time dilation ([Sta89], p. 893, footnote 10). 

4. In 1898, Henri Poincaré claimed that simultaneity of distant events would have to be established by convention, specifying that lightspeed is taken to be the same in all directions [citation needed]. 

5. In 1899, Lorentz presented a 'second-order' version of the Lorentz transformations, which included a time dilation in the moving frame, of various possible amounts. He showed that electrical and optical phenomena in the moving system were independent of motion even if terms of order v2 / c2 were retained [citation needed]. 

6. In 1900 Poincaré published a paper [Poi00] in which he explained that Lorentz's local time arose from a conventional method of synchronising clocks in a moving frame - by exchanging light signals assumed to travel with the same speed relative to the moving frame in both directions. He repeated this explanation in many subsequent 'popular science' books. In the same paper he considered radiation as a fictitious fluid with effective mass of m=E/c^2, as mentioned above. 

7. In many commentaries on Lorentz's work, 1900-1904, Poincaré used the phrase 'the principle of relative motion' a familar cornerstone of Newtonian mechanics, which he said was called into question by electro-magnetic theory, but apparently salvaged by Lorentz's theory. He expressed some dissatisfaction with Lorentz's theory by claiming it contained 'too many hypotheses' [citation needed]. 

8. In 1904 Lorentz published the correct transformations [Lor04] and derived a number of results from them, such as the variation of mass with velocity, and the inability of electrical or optical experiments to detect motion of the reference frame. 

9. In Sept 1904 Poincaré spoke at an international conference in St Louis in which he discussed "the principal results" of Lorentz's 1904 paper. Poincaré there spoke of "The Principle of Relativity", which he was now more confident would be generally true for "physical phenomena" - and thus also for electrodynamics. He expressed unease about the violations of the principle of conservation of momentum and mass in the radiation emission process. [citation needed] 

10. On 5 June 1905 Poincaré spoke at the Academy of Science in Paris and some days later a five page version of that talk was published in Comptes Rendus de l'Academie des Sciences ([Poi05]) in which he discussed Lorentz's 1904 paper. He wrote "the results that I have obtained agree on all important points with those of Lorentz; I have been led to only to modify and complete them on some points of detail" [Poi05]. He went on to write "the essential point, established by Lorentz, is that the equations of the electromagnetic field are not altered by a certain transformation (which I will call by the name of Lorentz)". He then wrote the Lorentz transformations in their modern form, having introduced a slighlty different notation from that Lorentz had used, and having re-arranged the equations algebraically. He also gave different expressions from those of Lorentz for the electric charge density and the convection current of an electron moving with respect to the moving frame (and moving with respect to the rest frame), and consequently derived expressions for the electric force on the moving electron which differed "also a little from those of Lorentz". He said the "ensemble of these transformations together with all rotations of space" form a group (but did not give details of the proof), and connected this group property with the impossibility of measuring absolute motion. Poincaré noted that he was led by Lorentz's results to suppose "that inertia is a completely electromagnetic phenomenon, as it is generally considered to be since the experiment of Kaufmann". (This summary of [Poi05] is based on the English translation of the entire article given by Keswani and Klimister (1983). The quotes are all from that translation.) 

...

==Attackers and defenders==

This section cites notable publications where people have expressed a view on the issues outlined above.

--G. H. Keswani (1965)--

In a 1965 series of articles tracing the history of relativity [Kes65], Keswani claimed that Poincaré and Lorentz should have main credit for special relativity - claiming that Poincaré pointedly credited Lorentz multiple times, while Lorentz credited Poincaré and Einstein, refusing to take credit for himself. 

This series of articles prompted responses, among others from Herbert Dingle and Karl Popper.

Dingle said, among other things, ".. the 'principle of relativity' had various meanings, and the theories associated with it were quite distinct; they were not different forms of the same theory. Each of the three protagonists.... was very well aware of the others .... but each preferred his own views" [Din65]

Karl Popper says "Though Einstein appears to have known Poincaré's Science and Hypothesis prior to 1905, there is no theory like Einstein's in this great book." [Pop65]

Keswani did not accept the criticism, and replied in two letters also published in the same journal ([Kes66a] and [Kes66b]) - in his reply to Dingle, he argues that the three relativity theories were at heart the same: ".. they meant much that was common. And that much mattered the most." [Kes66a]

Dingle commented the year after on the history of crediting: "Until the first World War, Lorentz's and Einstein's theories were regarded as different forms of the same idea, but Lorentz, having priority and being a more established figure speaking a more familiar language, was credited with it." (Dingle 1967, Nature 216 p.119-122).

...

--Christopher Jon Bjerknes (2002)--

In 2002, Christopher Jon Bjerknes self-published the book "Albert Einstein - The Incorrigible Plagiarist" [Bje02], accusing Einstein of plagiarism, claiming that Henri Poincaré was the true formulator of the theory of special relativity, and that David Hilbert had done the work of formulating the field equations of General Relativity, with Einstein plagiarizing them.

John Stachel, director of the Center for Einstein Studies at Boston University, reviewed this book in Physics World, stating that "its author has gained a certain notoriety as the result of his indefatigable - not to say monomaniacal - efforts to indict Einstein as an "incorrigible plagiarist" ", and vehemently denying the validity of the conclusions [Sta02]. Bjerknes responded with an article that was published in Infinite Energy magazine, as well as on his website [Bje03].

Bjerknes's work has otherwise not been taken up by the historical community. ...

...

--Olivier Darrigol on Special Relativity (2004)--

In his 2004 article, "The Mystery of the Einstein-Poincaré Connection", Darrigol wrote:

1. "By 1905 Poincaré's and Einstein's reflections on the electrodynamics of moving bodies led them to postulate the universal validity of the relativity principle, according to which the outcome of any conceivable experiment is independent of the inertial frame of reference in which it is performed. In particular, they both assumed that the velocity of light measured in different inertial frames was the same. They further argued that the space and time measured by observers belonging to different inertial systems were related to each other through the Lorentz transformations. They both recognized that the Maxwell-Lorentz equations of electrodynamics were left invariant by these transformations. They both required that every law of physics should be invariant under these transformations. They both gave the relativistic laws of motion. They both recognized that the relativity principle and the energy principle led to paradoxes when conjointly applied to radiation processes. On several points - namely, the relativity principle, the physical interpretation of Lorentz's transformations (to first order), and the radiation paradoxes - Poincaré's relevant publications antedated Einstein's relativity paper of 1905 by at least five years, and his suggestions were radically new when they first appeared. On the remaining points, publication was nearly simultaneous." 

2. "I turn now to basic conceptual differences. Einstein completely eliminated the ether, required that the expression of the laws of physics should be the same in any inertial frame, and introduced a "new kinematics" in which the space and time measured in different inertial systems were all on exactly the same footing. In contrast, Poincaré maintained the ether as a privileged frame of reference in which "true" space and time were defined, while he regarded the space and time measured in other frames as only "apparent." He treated the Lorentz contraction as a hypothesis regarding the effect of the edgewise motion of a rod through the ether, whereas for Einstein it was a kinematic consequence of the difference between the space and time defined by observers in relative motion. Einstein gave the operational meaning of time dilation, whereas Poincaré never discussed it. Einstein derived the expression of the Lorentz transformation from his two postulates (the relativity principle and the constancy of the velocity of light in a given inertial system), whereas Poincaré obtained these transformations as those that leave the Maxwell-Lorentz equations invariant. Whereas Einstein, having eliminated the ether, needed a second postulate, in Poincaré's view the constancy of the velocity of light (in the ether frame) derived from the assumption of a stationary ether. Einstein obtained the dynamics of any rapidly moving particle by the direct use of Lorentz covariance, whereas Poincaré reasoned according to a specific model of the electron built up in conformity with Lorentz covariance. Einstein saw that Poincaré's radiation paradoxes could be solved only by assuming the inertia of energy, whereas Poincaré never returned to this question. Lastly, Poincaré immediately proposed a relativistic modification of Newton's law of gravitation and saw the advantages of a four-vector formalism in this context, whereas Einstein waited a couple of years to address this problem complex." 

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

--Anatoly Alexeevich Logunov (2004)--

...

His book about Poincaré's relativity theory is a useful introduction to the subject. Starting on p. 113 is an English translation by V. A. Petrov, using modern notations, of the part of Poincaré's 1900 article containing E=mc^2. Logunov states that Poincaré's 1905 papers "Sur la dynamique de l'électron" (On the Dynamics of the Electron) are superior to Einstein's 1905 Elektrodynamik paper. According to Logunov, Poincaré was the first scientist to recognize the importance of invariance under the Poincaré group as a guideline for developing new theories in physics. In chapter 9 of this book, Logunov points out that Poincaré's second paper was the first one to formulate a complete theory of relativistic dynamics, containing the correct relativistic analogue of Newton's F=ma.

On p. 142, Logunov points out that Einstein wrote reviews for the Beibl\"{a}tter Annalen der Physik, writing 21 reviews in 1905. This contradicts the claims that Einstein worked in relative isolation and with limited access to the scientific literature, claims which are usually made to exculpate Einstein from plagiarism. Among the papers reviewed in 1905 Beibl\"{a}tter are a review, in the fourth (of 24) issue of 1905, of Lorentz' paper in the Versl. K. Ak. van Wet. 12(1904), p. 986 containing the Lorentz transformation. The review also contained these transformations. This supports the view that Einstein was familiar with the Lorentz' paper containing the correct relativistic transformation in early 1905, while his June 1905 Elektrodynamik paper does not mention Lorentz in connection with this result.

...

==References==

（仅列出上述引文相关的部分）

--Works of physics (primary sources)--

[Ein05c] Albert Einstein: Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter K\"{o}rper, Annalen der Physik 17(1905), 891-921. Received June 30, published September 26, 1905. Reprinted with comments in [Sta89], p. 276-306 English translation, with footnotes not present in the 1905 paper, available on the net (http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/einstein/specrel/) 

[Ein05d] Albert Einstein: Ist die Tr\"{a}gheit eines K?rpers von seinem Energiegehalt abh\"{a}ngig?, Annalen der Physik 18(1905), 639-641, Reprinted with comments in [Sta89], Document 24 English translation available on the net (http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/einstein/E_mc2/)

[Ein06] Albert Einstein: Das Prinzip von der Erhaltung der Schwerpunktsbewegung und die Tr\"{a}gheit der Energie Annalen der Physik 20(1906):627-633, Reprinted with comments in [Sta89], Document 35 

[Lor04] Lorentz, H. A. (1904) "Electromagnetic Phenomena in a System Moving with Any Velocity Less Than That of Light", Proc. Acad. Science Amsterdam, IV, 669-78. 

[Sta89] John Stachel (Ed.), The collected papers of Albert Einstein, volume 2, Princeton University Press, 1989 

[Poi00] Henri Poincaré: La théorie de Lorentz et le principe de l'action et de la réaction, Archives neérlandaises des Sciences exactes et naturelles, 2e série, 5(1900), p. 252-278, Recueil de Travaux offert \`{a} M. Lorentz \`{a} l'occasion du 25e anniversaire de son doctorat, Reprinted in Oeuvres, vol. IX, p. 454-488. An english translation, put into modern notation by V. A. Petrov, is given in [Log05, p. 113-120]

[Poi02] Henri Poincaré: La science et l'hypothèse, E. Flamarion, Paris, 1902. Electronic version (http://www.univ-nancy2.fr/poincare/bhp/shintro.html), english translation thereof (http://spartan.ac.brocku.ca/~lward/Poincare/Poincare_1905_07.html). 

[Poi04a] Henri Poincaré: L'état actuel et l'avenir de la physique mathématique., Bulletin des sciences mathématiques 28(1904), 302-324. Address delivered before the Section of Applied Mathematics of the International Congress of Arts and Science, St. Louis, September 24, 1904 

[Poi04b] Henri Poincaré: The Present and the Future of Mathematical Physics, Bull. Amer. Math. Soc., 12(1906), 240-260, engl. transl. of [Poi04a] by J. W. Young. 

[Poi04c] Henri Poincaré: The Present and the Future of Mathematical Physics, Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. (new series), 37(2000), 25-38, reprint of [Poi04b] 

[Poi05] Henri Poincaré: Sur la dynamique de l'électron, Comptes rendus de l'Académie des Sciences, 140(1905), p. 1504-1508. Reprinted in Oeuvres, vol. IX, p. 489-493 

--Secondary sources--

[Bje02] Bjerknes, Christopher Jon (2002). Einstein, the incorrigible plagiarist. ISBN 0-9719629-8-7. Amazon link - Author's site 

[Bje03] Bjerknes, Christopher Jon (May/June 2003). "A Response to Physics World's "Review" of Albert Einstein: The Incorrigible Plagiarist". Infinite Energy 8 (49): 65-68. (Magazine ToC: http://www.infinite-energy.com/iemagazine/issue49/)

[Din65] Herbert Dingle, "Note on Mr Keswani's articles, Origin and Concept of Relativity", Brit. J. Phil. Sci., vol 16, No 63 (Nov 1965), 242-246 (a response to [Kes65]) 

[Kes65] Keswani, G. H. (1965-6) "Origin and Concept of Relativity, Parts I, II, III", Brit. J. Phil. Sci., v15-17. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, ISSN 0007-0882. 

[Kes66a] Keswani, G. H. (1966), "Reply to Professor Dingle and Mr Levinson", Brit. J. Phil. Sci., Vol. 17, No. 2 (Aug 1966), 149-152 (a response to [Din65]) 

[Kes66b] Keswani, G. H. (1966), "Origin and Concept of Relativity: Reply to Professor Popper", Brit. J. Phil. Sci, Vol 17 no 3 (Nov 1966), 234-236 (a response to [Pop65] 

[Pop65] Karl R. Popper, "A Note on the Difference Between the Lorentz-Fitzgerald Contraction and the Einstein Contraction", Br. J. Phil. Sci. 16:64 (Feb 1966): 332-333 (a response to [Kes65]) 

[Rot06] Rothman, Tony (March/April 2006). "Lost in Einstein's Shadow". American Scientist 94 (2): 112. 

[Sta02] John Stachel: John Stachel's review of Bjerknes' book [Bje02]