The metamorphoses of relativity

This talk will explore the ways that problems shifted and disciplinary boundaries changed around physicists’ engagement with relational physics and relativistic thought, first in research dealing with physiology, psychology and geometry in the late nineteenth century and then (a better-known story) moving between physics, mathematics and geometry in the twentieth century. I hope to develop a richer approach for understanding the disciplinary and political significance of relativity, especially by considering in one framework the work of Engels, Mach, Einstein and Planck.