Suchergebnisse

1 Historischer Abriß der Relativitätstheorien -- 1.1 Ursprünge und Vorläufer der RT -- 1.2 Die spezielle Relativitätstheorie (SRT) -- 1.3 Die allgemeine Relativitätstheorie (ART) -- 1.4 Relativistische Kosmologie -- 1.5 Theoretische Alternativen zur ART -- 2 Ausgewählte Themata der Populärliteratur zur RT -- 2.1 Popularisierung oder Vulgarisierung ? -- 2.2 Statistiken zu Texten über die RT -- 2.3 Einige Common-sense-Argumente -- 2.4 Argumente gegen vermeintlichen 'Relativismus' und die Dialektik von Relativem und Absolutem -- 2.5 Die RT als Revolution — Einstein als Revolutionär -- 3 Besondere Gesichtspunkte -- 3.1 Deutschenhaß und chauvinistische Beurteilungen in ausländischen Stellungnahmen zur Relativitätstheorie -- 3.2 "Jüdische Propaganda" und antisemitische Hetzschriften zu Einstein -- 3.3 Wissenschaftshistorische Wiederausgrabungen als Prioritätsansprüche gegen Einstein -- 3.4 Der 'Verteidigergürtel' um Einstein -- 4 Vergleich philosophischer Interpretationen der RT -- 4.1 Neukantianismus -- 4.2 Kritischer Realismus -- 4.3 Phänomenologie (Husserl-Schule) -- 4.4 Fiktionalismus (Philosophie des Als-Ob) -- 4.5 Konventionalismus -- 4.6 Axiomatik der SRT im Vergleich -- 4.7 Logischer Empirismus -- 4.8 Neutraler Monismus, Phänomenalismus und relativistischer Positivismus -- 4.9 Operationalismus (Bridgman) -- 4.10 Intuitions- und Lebensphilosophie -- 4.11 Rationalismus Meyersonscher Ausprägung -- 4.12 Mischformen, Splittergruppen und idiosynkratische Einzelfälle -- 5 Ausgewählte Debatten zwischen Philosophen -- 5.1 Die Abwendung vom Neukantianismus bei Reichenbach und Schlick -- 5.2 André Metz' Rundumschläge -- 5.3 Inkommensurabilitätseffekte in der Debatte zwischen Oskar Kraus, Philipp Frank und Benno Urbach -- 6 Systematische Auswertung -- 6.1 Bescheidenheit und Lernbereitschaft -- 6.2 Technische Beherrschung des Materials -- 6.3 Anpassungs-und Revisionsbereitschaft -- 6.4 Wissenschaftsanalyse versus -kritik -- 6.5 Kritische Kenntnisnahme anderer Interpretationen -- 6.6 'Echte' Interpretationen der RT -- 6.7 Kriterien zur komparativen Qualitätsbewertung von Interpretationen -- 6.8 Rückblick -- Abkürzungsverzeichnis -- Bibliographie 1. Teil -- Bibliographie 2. Teil -- Namensregister.

Selected stages in the life and oeuvre of the natural philosopher Bemhard Bavink (1879-1947) are discussed in historical context with particular emphasis on scientiftc issues. Based on materials from the Berlin Document Center, and from his estate located in BielefeId, and supplemented by his unpublished autobiography written between 1941 and 1945 as well as by several of Bavink's papers;appearing in the journal Unsere Welt edited by him from 1920 on, and by certain passages in Bavink's books, this paper presents evidence of his courageous fight during the National Socialist (NS) regime in Germany for what he considered the untainted ,ethos of science' independent of nationality or religion. TItis is the more astonishing since before 1933, Bavink shared right-wing (Deutschnationale) politicaI opinions such as antisemitism with many of his colleagues (Fritz Ringer's Mandarins), and he only gradually realized that the new system, initially welcomed as the end of the unloved Weimar Republic, was much worse than expected. Special emphasis is given to the efforts of NS institutions to gain control over the maverick Bavink and to the reasons why they did not fully succeed in this. Extracts of letters by Planck, Joos, Finkelnburg and others demonstrate that Bavink had a vital role in the efforts of german physicists to resist the intrusion and spread of explicit anti-Semitism and NS racist ideology into their domain. It is illustrated here that it was quite possible to voice and to publish nonconformist opinions, contrary to the widespread view of lhis perlod as a time of drastic ,realignment' (Gleichschaltung) of all branches of public life to the doctrines of the German National Socialist Party (NSDAP). Because of his political ,unreliability' Bavink was prevented from getting a well-deserved chair for natural philosophy in Münster in 1941-43 and had to relinquish editorship of Unsere Welt in 1940, but neither he nor his family suffered any more drastic consequences.

During the McCarthy era, the Federal Bureau of Investigation accepted statements picked up from extreme right-wing newspapers and the testimonies of obscure propagandists as serious sources of politically incriminating material against troublesome left-wing scientists like Einstein.