XI
An immediate victim of relativity was Newton's law
of gravitation with its instantaneous action at a dis-
tance; for with simultaneity relative, one could no
longer accept a force acting with absolute simultaneity
on separated bodies. We can safely ignore the routine
modifications of Newton's law that were proposed to
let it fit into the relativistic framework; Einstein's by
no means routine theory of gravitation will be de-
scribed later.
That the startling relativistic kinematics, of which
we have just seen samples, did not also play havoc with
Maxwell's equations need not surprise us. Larmor,
Lorentz, and Poincaré had shown the intimate rela-
tionship between Maxwell's equations and the Lorentz
transformation. We can now appreciate the achieve-
ments of Fresnel and Maxwell: Fresnel's self-contra-
dictory “aether drag” was a relativistic effect, as too
was Maxwell's displacement current. Little wonder
that these concepts had seemed incredible. They were
valiant attempts to fit relativistic effects into the
kinematics of Newtonian absolute space and absolute
time. In retrospect the work of Fresnel and Maxwell
takes on that aspect of inspired madness that is the
highest form of the art we call science. So too does
the work of Einstein, for his theory of 1905 was itself
built on a contradiction: its basic principles assumed
reference frames made out of rigid rods while denying
their possibility. For a rigid rod would transmit impacts
instantly and could be used to synchronize clocks in
a manner conflicting with that proposed by Einstein.
