Pagina 57 de 212

THE HEURISTIC VALUE OF THE THEORY OF RELATIVITY

Our train of thought in the foregoing pages can be epitomised in

the following manner. Experience has led to the conviction that,

on the one hand, the principle of relativity holds true and that

on the other hand the velocity of transmission of light in vacuo

has to be considered equal to a constant c. By uniting these two

postulates we obtained the law of transformation for the

rectangular co-ordinates x, y, z and the time t of the events

which constitute the processes of nature. In this connection we

did not obtain the Galilei transformation, but, differing from

classical mechanics, the _Lorentz transformation_.

The law of transmission of light, the acceptance of which is

justified by our actual knowledge, played an important part in

this process of thought. Once in possession of the Lorentz

transformation, however, we can combine this with the principle

of relativity, and sum up the theory thus: