ABSTRACT
The reasons for accepting Einstein’s law of gravitation rather than Newton’s are partly empirical, partly logical. We will begin with the former.
The new law of gravitation gives very nearly the same results as the old, when applied to the calculation of the orbits of the planets and their satellites. If it did not, it could not be true, since the consequences deduced from the old law have been found to be almost exactly verified by observation. When, in 1915, Einstein first published the new law, there was only one empirical fact to which he could point to show that his theory was better than the old one. This was what is called the motion of the perihelion of Mercury.
