The Changing Conceptions of the Universe - From Newton to Einstein -

Оглавление

Arthur Stanley Eddington. The Changing Conceptions of the Universe - From Newton to Einstein -

The Changing Conceptions of the Universe - From Newton to Einstein -

Table of Contents

Preface

Preface To Second Edition

I. Newton

References

II. The Ether and Its Consequences

References

III. Einstein

References

Appendix

Note 1 (page 21)

Note 2 (page 27)

Note 3 (page 30)

Note 4 (page 51)

Note 5 (page 55)

Note 6 (page 56)

Note 7 (page 57)

Note 8 (page 59)

Note 9 (page 67)

TIME, SPACE, AND GRAVITATION1

EINSTEIN’S LAW OF GRAVITATION1

THE DEFLECTION OF LIGHT BY GRAVITATION AND THE EINSTEIN THEORY OF RELATIVITY.1

Отрывок из книги

Benjamin Harrow, Albert Einstein, Arthur Stanley Eddington, Joseph Sweetman Ames, Joseph John Thomson, Frank Watson Dyson

Published by

.....

The “Principia.” The law of gravitation, embodying also laws of motion, which we shall discuss presently, was first published in Newton’s immortal “Principia” (1686). A selection from the preface will disclose the contents of the book, and, incidentally, the style of the author: “… We offer this work as mathematical principles of philosophy; for all the difficulty in philosophy seems to consist in this—from the phenomena of motions to investigate the forces of nature, and then from these forces to demonstrate the other phenomena; and to this end the general propositions in the first and second book are directed. In the third book we give an example of this in the explication of the system of the world; for by the propositions mathematically demonstrated in the first book, we there derive from the celestial phenomena the forces of gravity with which bodies tend to the sun and the several planets. Then, from these forces, by other propositions which are also mathematical, we deduce the motions of the planets, the comets, the moon and the sea. I wish we could derive the rest of the phenomena of nature by the same kind of reasoning from mechanical principles; for I am induced by many reasons to suspect that they may all depend upon certain forces by which the particles of bodies, by some causes hitherto unknown, are either mutually impelled towards each other, and cohere in regular figures, or are repelled and recede from each other.…”

At this point we may state that neither Newton, nor any of Newton’s successors including Einstein, have been able to advance even a plausible theory as to the nature of this gravitational force. We know that this force pulls a stone to the ground; we know, thanks to Newton, the laws regulating the motions due to gravity; but what this force we call gravity really is we do not know. The mystery is as deep as the mystery of the origin of life.

.....