Where Have All Einstein Opponents Gone?

Aus dem Blog von Claes Johnson, Mai 2011:

Where Have All Einstein Opponents Gone?
Claes Johnson

Milena Wazeck describes her new book Die öffentliche Kontroverse um die Relativitätstheorie in den 1920er Jahren (about the public controverse on Einstein’s theory of relativity if the 1920s) as follows:
.

Shortly after the confirmation of his theory of general relativity in 1919, Albert Einstein was transformed into a media star of Weimar Germany.
Numerous accounts published during the 1920s claimed to refute his new theory.
Einstein’s opponents were not limited to physicists and philosophers. Engineers, doctors, businessmen, and writers also raised strong objections to one of the most important scientific theories of the twentieth century.
…self-proclaimed researchers alleged to have proved the theory of relativity to be scientifically incorrect… (but) rested on fundamental misunderstandings…
…criticisms of Einstein’s work put forward by physicists who clung to classical physics, and philosophers who saw central elements of their ways of understanding the world threatened by Einstein’s fundamental restructuring of the basic principles of physics.
The controversy surrounding the theory of relativity was exceptionally heated.
A complex process of marginalization and protest helps to account for the heated responses..
… any sort of resolution of the controversy had become impossible.
…the fundamental restructuring of the basic principles of physics impacted not only science, but also modes of thinking far beyond academic circles as well.