ABSTRACT

The General Theory of Relativity (GTR) has frequently been regarded as the ultimate defeat for absolutism. For some time after the development of the theory, writers following the lead given by Hans Reichenbach continued to claim: that the ideas of Leibniz and Mach are vindicated by GTR; that Albert Einstein overcame the need for irreducible references to absolute space and time in our physical theories; and that inertial effects may be understood in terms of material interactions alone. 1 But a succession of contemporary writers have shown that such claims are not fully supported by GTR as normally understood. 2 In order to explore the issues involved, we need to focus clearly on the idea of a model of GTR. We need models to characterise a tremendous range of gravitational contexts, from planets orbiting the Sun to distant rotating black holes.