ABSTRACT
The Special Theory of Relativity arose not from any inadequacies of Newtonian mechanics as such, but from problems from electromagnetism. Newtonian mechanics, with its simple addition law for velocities in the same direction, would lead us to expect that the speed of light measured in two different frames of reference, moving at a uniform velocity with respect to each other, would work out differently. There is no straight opposition between relativity theories and Newtonian, absolute, theories. All geometry and all mechanics are in some degree relativistic: all concern themselves with some equivalence relations which are taken as invariant. I. Newton does sometimes himself so speak. He confuses physical arguments against accelerating and rotating frames of reference which are not criticized by the Special Theory of Relativity, but only by the General Theory—with philosophical presuppositions about philosopher's space, and with theological considerations that lie outside physics.
