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Main Authors: Madarász, Judit, Stannett, Mike, Székely, Gergely
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.21180
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author Madarász, Judit
Stannett, Mike
Székely, Gergely
author_facet Madarász, Judit
Stannett, Mike
Székely, Gergely
contents In this paper, we prove a pure mathematical result which has important implications for the history and philosophy of classical physics and the conceptual origins of relativity theory. In formal terms, we show that, up to definitional equivalence, there is no intermediate model of spacetime lying strictly between special relativity and late classical kinematics. Informally, this means that there was essentially no other option but to switch to special relativity to resolve the conflict between late classical kinematics and the null result of the Michelson--Morley experiment.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_21180
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle On Andréka's Conjecture that special relativity is the only possible conceptual reduct of classical kinematics
Madarász, Judit
Stannett, Mike
Székely, Gergely
Mathematical Physics
In this paper, we prove a pure mathematical result which has important implications for the history and philosophy of classical physics and the conceptual origins of relativity theory. In formal terms, we show that, up to definitional equivalence, there is no intermediate model of spacetime lying strictly between special relativity and late classical kinematics. Informally, this means that there was essentially no other option but to switch to special relativity to resolve the conflict between late classical kinematics and the null result of the Michelson--Morley experiment.
title On Andréka's Conjecture that special relativity is the only possible conceptual reduct of classical kinematics
topic Mathematical Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.21180