A Criticism of Einstein and His Problem (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from A Criticism of Einstein and His Problem

Up and half down stream, than to swim the same distance at right angles to the current, some important conclusions were based on the failure to detect by the famous experiment any difference in velocity between two rays_of light, so directed as to travel an identical distance upon two different axes, at right angles to one another. Postponing for the present all refer ence to the special question of light and the ether, I wish first to investigate a little more closely the variable fortunes of the swimmer in the stream. The figures justifying the ordinary doctrine may easily be found (as, for example, in the first chapter of Professor Eddington's Time, Space and Gravitation), nor do I propose to question their accuracy. The result, nevertheless, is a little perplexing, and one can imagine an amateurish critic, with a certain instinctive taste for probability, hankering after a very different conclusion. Given that a swimmer has a normal velocity in still water, it seems clear enough that some thing must be subtracted from his ordinary speed when he has to struggle against a cur rent, and something added when he travels with its aid. But does it not also seem obvious that the stream must repay on the downward course exactly as much as it borrowed on the upward? If x be the normal velocity, and.

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