Has the general theory of relativity repudiated absolute space?

pp. 418-424

in: Adolf Grünbaum, Philosophical problems of space and time, Berlin, Springer, 1973

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