WHITEHEAD, Alfred North. The Principle of Relativity with applications to Physical Science. Cambridge: University Press. 1922.
8vo. Original blue cloth, gilt lettering to spine; pp. xii + 190, diagrams to text; minimal rubbing to head and foot of spine, near fine.
First edition. Whitehead's critique of Einstein is an attempt to harmonise the theory of relativity with common sense. He makes some important points about the problems of measurements raised by Einstein's theory. These lead, most importantly, to Whitehead's own theory of gravitation, an alternative hypothesis in which the geometric structure of the universe is based on fixed a priori spatio-temporal relationships. Whitehead's theory was considered a genuine rival to general relativity until the 1970s, when empirical observations proved it to be impossible in practice.
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