Time&Eternity

speed. In this network of relationships and boundaries, time no longer has
an independent existence; it appears—as in Leibniz—to be a way of ordering
matter that has no physical meaning without changes in the relationships
of objects. 145
In addition to the constancy of the speed of light in the vacuum, Einstein
built on the postulate of the validity of the same laws of nature in all
systems moving uniformly towards one another. 146 However, even before
then, in agreement with the Michelson-Morley experiment, the result of
which “was a verdict of ‘death’ to the theory of a calm ether-sea through
which all matter moves,” 147 Einstein had eliminated the “‘enfant terrible’ of
the family of physical substances” 148 and basically dropped the ether concept.
The two presuppositions for Einstein’s special theory of relativity produce
a contradiction to the classical transformation. For high speeds, it is
easy to show that the Galilean Transformation of classical mechanics is inapplicable.
149 While the experiences gained through classical mechanics
definitely retain their validity for low speeds compared to the speed of light,
speeds that approximate the speed of light require the Lorentz Transformation.
This transformation predicts that a rod moved at high speed will
shrink in the direction of motion, and a clock moved in the same way will
slow its pace (time dilatation). At the speed of light, the rod would disappear,
and the clock would stop. 150 The equations of the Lorentz-Transfor-
mation 151
Time in the Formulation of Scientific Theory 143
x–vt
x´= y´=y z´=z t´=
v 2
1– � c
√
�
vx
c 2 t–
v
1–
c
contain, as it were, the Galilean Transformation, since when the speed of
light travels towards infinity, a transition from the Lorentz Transformation
into the Galilean Transformation occurs (the denominator of the first equation
approximates 1), i.e., if the speed of light is infinite, there would be an
instant signal transmission, and thus absolute time. The discrepancy between
the values of the classical transformation and those of the Lorentz
Transformation is greatest for speeds approximating the speed of light.
A few months after the publication of the article “Zur Elektrodynamik
bewegter Körper” (On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies) in the Annalen
der Physik, Einstein concluded that there is a general equivalence of
mass and energy, which was expressed in the well-known formula E =
mc 2 . 152
In contrast to classical mechanics, the measurement of space and time in
relativistic physics using the regularities of light clearly shows: “The means
√
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