Has the General Theory of Relativity Repudiated Absolute Space?

Abstract

The literature of recent decades on the philosophy and history of science has nurtured and given wide currency to a myth concerning the present status of the dispute between the absolutistic and relativistic theories of space. In particular, that literature is rife with assertions that the post-Newtonian era has witnessed “the final elimination of the concept of absolute space from the conceptual scheme of modern physics”¹ by Einstein’s general theory of relativity and that the Leibniz-Huyghens polemic against Newton and Clarke has thus been triumphantly vindicated.² In this vein, Philipp Frank recently reached the following verdict on Einstein’s success in the implementation of Ernst Mach’s program for a relativistic account of the inertial properties of matter: “Einstein started a new analysis of Newtonian mechanics which eventually vindicated Mach’s reformulation [of Newtonian mechanics].”³