I’ve been spending a bit of time and effort this past year seeking to improve my understanding of subjects in which I find myself embarrassingly deficient. Among these many subjects encompassed by this project, mathematics and physics have been foremost. Therefore in recent months I’ve read a few introductions to the study of physics, a history of its development, and the Physics of Aristotle; I’ve also spent quite a lot of time working through mathematics modules on Khan Academy (it is by no means only for children…) in an effort to refresh and improve my skills in that subject. Thus, thinking that I’ve been making reasonable progress in this endeavor, I’ve decided that the next work I should take up is Albert Einstein’s Relativity.
Written after he completed the final version of his General Theory of Relativity, Dr. Einstein wrote Relativity as a book that would explain both his special and general theories of relativity to a wide-ranging, non-specialist audience. Quite simply, it was intended to be a popular book. In his own words, as he recorded in the preface to the original 1916 edition (translated here from the original German into English by Dr. Robert W. Lawson), it was a book “intended, as far as possible, to give an exact insight into the theory of Relativity to those readers who, from a general scientific and philosophical point of view, are interested in the theory, but who are not conversant with the mathematical apparatus of theoretical physics.” He wanted it to be understood not just be his fellow scientists, but by anyone who was interested in doing so; the result being a common understanding of the theories for the common man and woman.
As many editions of this work have been published since the first in 1916, I’ve chose, the Princeton University Press edition Relativity: The Special and the General Theory (100th Anniversary Edition) that features commentaries by Prof. Hanoch Gutfreund and Dr. Jürgen Renn. It is because of the inclusion of these commentaries that I chose this edition for my studies. Being familiar with the three richly annotated volumes these two scholars have written (also published by Princeton University Press) about not only Dr. Einstein’s work in physics but of his autobiography as well, I have all confidence that their guidance through Relativity will be most heartily appreciated.
