1905 · Albert Einstein
Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper
What this work is
Einstein's 1905 paper on special relativity. He starts from two postulates: the laws of physics are the same for every uniformly moving observer, and light always travels at one speed. From these he works out that moving clocks run slow and moving rods shorten, and shows that Maxwell's equations keep their form for a moving observer.
Then and now
Einstein derived slow clocks and short rods from two assumptions about motion and light. Physics built relativity on the paper and now treats spacetime and fields filling empty space as real things. The paper never showed either, and nobody has seen them.
Verdict
UNSCIENTIFIC
The work only partly follows the scientific method inside its paradigm, and the paradigm itself does not pass. The worse layer decides. The verdict is unscientific.
1·This work · inside the paradigm
MIXED
Partly follows the scientific method within Field Theory.
2·Paradigm · Field Theory
UNSCIENTIFIC
Fails the tests. The worse layer decides.
How the verdict is decided
The verdict grades both layers: the paradigm this work assumes, and how the work was carried out inside it. Both must be scientific for the whole thing to be scientific. A clean method inside an unscientific paradigm is unscientific. An unscientific method inside a better paradigm is unscientific. A split on either layer is mixed. The worse layer decides.
1·This work
Did this work test its claim with methods that are independent, falsifiable, and non-circular?
MIXED
This work claims that the laws of electricity, magnetism, and light look exactly the same to every uniformly moving observer, that this follows from two postulates, and that a light medium is therefore unnecessary. The tests split.
Independently Verifiable
Fail
Section 3 turns light flashes and clock hands into the moving observer's time by dividing each signal's path by the assumed constant speed V.
Falsifiable
Pass
The paper stakes its conjecture on the failed attempts to detect the Earth's motion relative to the light medium, so a successful detection is the named result that kills it.
Non-Circular
Pass
Both premises are announced as premises, and the only facts cited, the current in the wire and the failed medium-detection experiments, were not produced by the theory being argued for.
Why
The moving observer's time is never measured. It comes from dividing a light signal's path by the speed the paper assumes, and that step is where independent verification fails. The paper does name the result that would kill it, a detected motion of the Earth through the light medium. Its two premises are stated openly as premises, and the facts it cites came from outside the theory.
2·Paradigm · Field Theory
Does the framework this work assumes pass the three tests?
UNSCIENTIFIC
Independently Verifiable
Fail
A needle swing and a heated wire are visible; the field the model says surrounds the moving magnet is the equations' reading of those events, and nobody sees it.
Falsifiable
Fail
Every time light misbehaved relative to the equations, the framework kept the field and added new structure, so no result anywhere takes the field away.
Non-Circular
Fail
The equations were built by naming the cause of needle swings and induction currents a field, and this paper validates that field by checking the same equations keep their form under the new time rules.
Why
The framework this paper runs on is field theory. What anyone can watch is a needle swinging, a wire heating, a spark jumping. Maxwell's mathematics was written to reproduce those events and named their cause a field filling all space. Einstein takes that mathematics for resting bodies as given and asks only how it looks to a moving observer. His electrodynamical argument is substitution throughout: push the new time and length rules through the equations, confirm the equations survive, and report the fields in the moving frame, quantities that exist only as output of those equations. When later experiments disagreed with the equations, the framework kept the field and layered new constructs on top of it rather than dropping the entity. The deflections are real. The field riding on them has never been seen apart from the equations that define it.
From the work
Beispiele ähnlicher Art, sowie die mißlungenen Versuche, eine Bewegung der Erde relativ zum „Lichtmedium“ zu kon¬ statieren, führen zu der Vermutung, daß dem Begriffe der absoluten Ruhe nicht nur in der Mechanik, sondern auch in der Elektrodynamik keine Eigenschaften der Erscheinungen ent¬ sprechen
Die Einführung eines „Lichtäthers“ wird sich insofern als überflüssig erweisen, als nach der zu entwickelnden Auffassung weder ein mit besonderen Eigenschaften ausgestatteter „absolut ruhender Raum“ eingeführt, noch einem Punkte des leeren Raumes, in welchem elektromagnetische Prozesse statt¬ finden, ein Geschwindigkeitsvektor zugeordnet wird.
Wir wollen diese Vermutung (deren Inhalt im folgenden „Prinzip der Relativität“ genannt werden wird) zur Voraussetzung er¬ heben und außerdem die mit ihm nur scheinbar unverträgliche Voraussetzung einführen, daß sich das Licht im leeren Räume stets mit einer bestimmten, vom Bewegungszustande des emit¬ tierenden Körpers unabhängigen Geschwindigkeit V fortpflanze.
Man schließt daraus, daß eine am Erdäquator befindliche Unruhuhr um einen sehr kleinen Betrag langsamer laufen muß als eine genau gleich beschaffene, sonst gleichen Bedingungen unterworfene, an einem Erdpole befindliche Uhr.