222 DOC. 52 GEOMETRY AND EXPERIENCE
246
CONTRIBUTIONS TO SCIENCE
an
analogous
manner.
My only
aim
today
has been
to
show
that
the
human
faculty
of visualization
is
by no means
bound
to
capitulate
to
non-Euclidean
geometry.
ON
THE THEORY OF RELATIVITY
Lecture
at
King’s College,
London, 1921.
Published
in
Mein
Weltbild, Amsterdam:
Querido
Verlag,
1934.
It
is
a
particular
pleasure to
me
to
have the
privilege
of
speak-
ing
in
the
capital
of
the
country
from
which the
most important
fundamental
notions
of
theoretical
physics
have issued.
I
am
thinking
of the
theory
of
mass
motion
and
gravitation
which
Newton
gave us
and the
concept
of the
electromagnetic field,
by
means
of which
Faraday
and Maxwell
put
physics
on a new
basis. The
theory
of
relativity
may
indeed
be said
to
have
put
a sort
of
finishing
touch
to
the
mighty
intellectual
edifice of
Maxwell and
Lorentz, inasmuch
as
it
seeks
to
extend field
physics
to
all
phenomena, gravitation
included.
Turning
to
the
theory
of
relativity itself,
I
am
anxious
to
draw attention
to
the
fact
that
this
theory is
not
speculative
in
origin;
it
owes
its
invention
entirely to
the
desire
to
make
physi-
cal
theory
fit
observed fact
as
well
as
possible.
We have here
no
revolutionary
act
but
the natural
continuation
of
a
line that
can
be traced
through
centuries.
The abandonment
of
certain
notions
connected with
space,
time,
and
motion hitherto treated
as
fundamentals
must
not
be
regarded
as
arbitrary,
but
only
as
conditioned
by
observed facts.
The
law of
the
constant
velocity
of
light
in
empty space,
which has been
confirmed
by
the
development
of electro-
dynamics
and
optics,
and the
equal legitimacy
of all
inertial
sys-
tems
(special
principle
of
relativity),
which
was
proved
in
a
par-
ticularly
incisive
manner
by
Michelson’s famous
experiment,
between them made
it
necessary,
to
begin
with,
that the
concept
of
time should
be made
relative, each
inertial
system being
given
its
own special
time.
As
this
notion
was developed,
it