---
title: "Criticism of the theory of relativity"
chunk: 1/9
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_theory_of_relativity"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:36:32.666932+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Criticism of the theory of relativity of Albert Einstein was mainly expressed in the early years after its publication in the early twentieth century, on scientific, pseudoscientific, philosophical, or ideological bases. Though some of these criticisms had the support of reputable scientists, Einstein's theory of relativity is now accepted by the scientific community.
Reasons for criticism of the theory of relativity have included alternative theories, rejection of the abstract-mathematical method, and alleged errors of the theory. Antisemitic objections to Einstein's Jewish heritage also occasionally played a role in these objections. There are still some critics of relativity today, but their opinions are not shared by the majority in the scientific community.

== Special relativity ==

=== Relativity principle versus electromagnetic worldview ===
Around the end of the 19th century, the view was widespread that all forces in nature are of electromagnetic origin (the "electromagnetic worldview"), especially in the works of Joseph Larmor (1897) and Wilhelm Wien (1900). This was apparently confirmed by the experiments of Walter Kaufmann (1901–1903), who measured an increase of the mass of a body with velocity which was consistent with the hypothesis that the mass was generated by its electromagnetic field. Max Abraham (1902) subsequently sketched a theoretical explanation of Kaufmann's result in which the electron was considered as rigid and spherical. However, it was found that this model was incompatible with the results of many experiments (including the Michelson–Morley experiment, the experiments of Rayleigh and Brace, and the Trouton–Noble experiment), according to which no motion of an observer with respect to the luminiferous aether ("aether drift") had been observed despite numerous attempts to do so. Henri Poincaré (1902) conjectured that this failure arose from a general law of nature, which he called "the principle of relativity". Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (1904) created a detailed theory of electrodynamics (Lorentz ether theory) that was premised on the existence of an immobile aether and employed a set of space and time coordinate transformations that Poincaré called the Lorentz transformations, including the effects of length contraction and local time. However, Lorentz's theory only partially satisfied the relativity principle, because his transformation formulas for velocity and charge density were incorrect. This was corrected by Poincaré (1905) who obtained full Lorentz covariance of the electrodynamic equations.
Criticizing Lorentz's 1904 theory, Abraham (1904) held that the Lorentz contraction of electrons requires a non-electromagnetic force to ensure the electron's stability. This was unacceptable to him as a proponent of the electromagnetic worldview. He continued that as long as a consistent explanation is missing as to how those forces and potentials act together on the electron, Lorentz's system of hypotheses is incomplete and doesn't satisfy the relativity principle. Poincaré (1905) removed this objection by showing that the non-electromagnetic potential ("Poincaré stress") holding the electron together can be formulated in a Lorentz covariant way, and showed that in principle it is possible to create a Lorentz covariant model for gravitation which he considered non-electromagnetic in nature as well. Thus the consistency of Lorentz's theory was proven, but the electromagnetic worldview had to be given up. Eventually, Albert Einstein published in September 1905 what is now called special relativity, which was based on a radical new application of the relativity principle in connection with the constancy of the speed of light. In special relativity, the space and time coordinates depend on the inertial observer's frame of reference, and the luminiferous aether plays no role in the physics. Although this theory was founded on a very different kinematical model, it was experimentally indistinguishable from the aether theory of Lorentz and Poincaré, since both theories satisfy the relativity principle of Poincaré and Einstein, and both employ the Lorentz transformations. After Minkowski's introduction in 1908 of the geometric spacetime model for Einstein's version of relativity, most physicists eventually decided in favor of the Einstein-Minkowski version of relativity with its radical new views of space and time, in which there was no useful role for the aether.