Abstract

One might be surprised at finding a protracted refutation of the theory of relativity in a turbine engineering journal. Milena Wazeck says we should not. Once we grasp the common threads among anti-relativity activists in the 1920s, she argues, it becomes clear why turbine engineering was a natural home for such ideas.Einstein’s Opponents contends that historians’ current understanding of the anti-relativity movement is obscured by the enormous shadow of the Nazis. Instead of reaching forward to the 1930s to explain the clash of the 20s, it instead points us back to the long nineteenth century. There we find the wonderfully named “world riddle solvers.” They were a group who saw themselves as scientists generating new knowledge, although they functioned almost completely outside the circles of academic science. They often worked in spiritual or holistic contexts and built elaborate theories based on core ideas such as occultism, vitalism, and monism. These theories carried titles such ..