"By laying down the relativity postulate from the outset, sufficient means have been created for deducing henceforth the complete series of Laws of Mechanics from the principle of conservation of energy (and statements concerning the form of the energy) alone." (Hermann Minkowski, "The Fundamental Equations for Electromagnetic Processes in Moving Bodies", 1907)
"It would be very unsatisfactory if the new way of looking at the time-concept, which permits a Lorentz transformation, were to be confined to a single part of Physics." (Hermann Minkowski, "The Fundamental Equations for Electromagnetic Processes in Moving Bodies", 1907)
"Electric and magnetic forces. May they live for ever, and never be forgot, if only to remind us that the science of electromagnetics, in spite of the abstract nature of its theory, involving quantities whose nature is entirely unknown at the present, is really and truly founded on the observations of real Newtonian forces, electric and magnetic respectively." (Oliver Heaviside, "Electromagnetic Theory", 1912)
"I cannot but regard the ether, which can be the seat of an electromagnetic field with its energy and its vibrations, as endowed with a certain degree of substantiality, however different it may be from all ordinary matter." (Hendrik Lorentz, "The Theory of Electrons and Its Applications to the Phenomena of Light and Radiant Heat", 1916)
"A new theory by the author has been added, which draws the physical inferences consequent on the extension of the foundations of geometry beyond Reimann... and represents an attempt to derive from world-geometry not only gravitational but also electromagnetic phenomena. Even if this theory is still only in its infant stage, I feel convinced that it contains no less truth than Einstein's Theory of Gravitation—whether this amount of truth is unlimited or, what is more probable, is bounded by the Quantum Theory." (Albert Einstein, "The Meaning of Relativity", 1922)
"Before the development of the theory of relativity it was known the principle of energy and momentum could be expressed in a differential form for the electromagnetic field. The four-dimensional formulation of these principles leads to an important conception, that of the energy tensor, which is important of the further development of the theory of relativity." (Albert Einstein, "The Meaning of Relativity", 1922)
"First, the physicists in the persons of Faraday and Maxwell, proposed the 'electromagnetic field' in contradistinction to matter, as a reality of a different category. Then, during the last century, the mathematicians, […] secretly undermined belief in the evidence of Euclidean Geometry. And now, in our time, there has been unloosed a cataclysm which has swept away space, time, and matter hitherto regarded as the firmest pillars of natural science, but only to make place for a view of things of wider scope and entailing a deeper vision. This revolution was promoted essentially by the thought of one man, Albert Einstein." (Hermann Weyl," Space, Time, Matter", 1922)
"When Faraday filled space with quivering lines of force, he was bringing mathematics into electricity. When Maxwell stated his famous laws about the electromagnetic field it was mathematics. The relativity theory of Einstein which makes gravity a fiction, and reduces the mechanics of the universe to geometry, is mathematical research." (James B Shaw, "The Spirit of Research", The Monist No. 4, 1922)
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