From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!seismo!hao!hplabs!sri-unix!gwyn@Brl-Vld.ARPA Newsgroups: net.physics Title: Re: Speed of light Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.1357 Posted: Wed May 11 21:56:38 1983 Received: Tue May 17 06:14:08 1983 From: Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) There was indeed a circular argument in one of Einstein's early developments of special relativity, but the theory can be arrived at using alternative approaches. The general theory is not _________logically based on special relativity but rather includes the latter as a special case. The appeal to agreement with experiment was only sought by Einstein to sell the general theory once he had developed it; of course some physical arguments and probably the world's finest physics intuition went into formulating this theory. I was careful to avoid mentioning quantum theory because of its poor fit to relativity theory. The Bell inequalities do show that classical quantum theory does not mesh well with special relativity, but then that is obvious from general considerations. It is interesting that the recent emergence of gauge theories as fundamental physical principles is much closer to Einstein's work on a unified field theory than physics has been for fifty years. I have long been convinced that Einstein really did know what he was about!