Ginoux Responds to Weinstein Again

I have criticized the Israel philosophy professor and Einstein scholar Galina Weinstein here several times. Now that John Stachel has died, she seems to think it is her responsibility to attack anyone with unapproved historical treatments of Einstein.

Now Jean Marc Ginoux has posted another rebuttal to her harsh attacks.

Mrs. Weinstein uses arguments so ridiculous and so unconvincing that she reduces herself to insulting me rather than trying to convince me of their merits, as one would normally do between academics. So I've decided to reply to her again and demonstrate that her allegedly "novel way" of reconstructing the history of the theory of special relativity is purely based on her own interpretation of the facts and not on the facts themselves. To this aim, I will follow the structure of Weinstein's paper and show section by section all the erroneous things she has reported and repeated.

The funny thing is that he is not even particularly critical of Einstein, and mainly wants to credit Poincare for what he did. The preface to his book was written by Arthur I, Miller, whom I once criticized for overcrediting Einstein.

One of Weinstein's main points is that Einstein abolished the aether. But, as Ginoux explains, Einstein declared in 1920:

“Recapitulating, we may say that according to the general theory of relativity space is endowed with physical qualities; in this sense, therefore, there exists an ether. According to the general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable; for in such space there not only would be no propagation of light, but also no possibility of existence for standards of space and time (measuring-rods and clocks), nor therefore any space-time intervals in the physical sense. But this ether may not be thought of as endowed with the quality characteristic of ponderable media, as consisting of parts which may be tracked through time. The idea of motion may not be applied to it [2].”

The point here is that aether can be defined as spacetime, or whatever structure is required to transmit. You can argue that no such structure is needed, and that light can propagate in a vacuum. But light still has physical properties, and you can think of those properties as the aether.

Whatever the aether is, relativity teaches that it is Lorentz invariant, and motion against the aether has no part in the theory. Lorentz explained all this in his 1895 paper, rejecting the aether motion theories.

Ginoux concludes:

Mrs. Weinstein’s analysis is clearly based on a desire to defend Einstein at all costs. It is therefore biased and subjective. Her arguments have no value because they are not based on documents, archives, letters, etc., but on her interpretations of these documents, archives, and letters. She is never able to prove anything she claims. ...

Finally, when she has no more arguments to oppose me, she chooses condescension and insults by explaining that my “presentation, unfortunately, rests on a mistaken premise of the mathematics at issue” and that I am a donkey. She even has the audacity to lecture me and explain that we must have a respectful attitude among academics. Where is the respect in her comment?

He has some discussion of how Lorentz and Poincare credited others, while Einstein refused. In particular, some of Lorentz's comments appear contradictory. The main thing I get out of this is that Lorentz and Poincare were honorable men, and Einstein was not.

I prefer to credit men for what they do, not how they brag about themselves.