Note 1 — § 1 THE "SPECIAL" THEORY OF RELATIVITY AS A STEPPING STONE TO THE "GENERAL" THEORY OF RELATIVITY

Note.—Most of the objections to the new development have, it is admitted, been raised because a branch of science which was not considered to have a just claim to deal with questions of mechanics, asserted the right of exercising a far-reaching influence upon the latter, extending even to its foundation. If, however, we trace these objections to their source, we discover that they are due to a wish to give mechanics the form of a purely mathematical science, similar to geometry, in spite of the fact that it is founded upon hypotheses which are essentially physical: up to the present, certainly, these hypotheses have not been recognized to be such.