O renascimento da relatividade geral: teses e perspectivas historiográficas
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47456/Cad.Astro.v6n1.46016Palavras-chave:
História da Física, Relatividade Geral, Albert Einstein, HistoriografiaResumo
Neste artigo, discutimos a tese, corrente entre físicos e historiadores, de que teria havido, após três décadas de estagnação, um “renascimento” do interesse na relatividade geral nas décadas de 1950 e 1960. Apresentamos duas versões dessa tese, uma que situa a mudança como tendo ocorrido nos anos 1950, a partir da realização das primeiras conferências dedicadas à relatividade geral, e outra que identifica a mudança como tendo ocorrido nos anos 1960, com os avanços da astrofísica. Revisamos as principais defesas dessa tese por físicos e historiadores, recordamos algumas críticas que ela recebeu e analisamos as principais evidências históricas que aparecem nesse debate historiográfico. Por fim, refletimos sobre a validade dessa tese e sobre os desafios atuais na pesquisa sobre a história da relatividade geral.
Downloads
Referências
[1] B. Wilson e D. Kaiser, Calculating Times: Radar, Ballistic Missiles, and Einstein’s Relativity, in Science and Technology in the Global Cold War, editado por N. Oreskes e J. Krige (The MIT Press, Cambridge, 2014), 273–316.
[2] M. Born, Die Relativitätstheorie Einsteins (Springer, Berlin, 1920). Segunda edição, em inglês: M. Born Einstein’s Theory of Relativity (Dover, New York, 1962).
[3] W. Pauli, Relativitätstheorie, in Encyklopädie der Mathematischen Wissenschaften, Fünfter Band, Zweiter Teil, editado por A. Sommerfeld (Teubner, Leipzig, 1921), 539–775. Publicado separadamente: W. Pauli, Relativitätstheorie (Springer, Berlin, 1921). Tradução para o inglês: W. Pauli, Theory of Relativity (Dover, New York, 1981).
[4] M. A. Costa, Introdução a theoria da relatividade (Sussekind de Mendonça & Cia., Rio de Janeiro, 1922.). Segunda edição: M. A. Costa, Introdução à teoria da relatividade (Editora da UFRJ, Rio de Janeiro, 1995).
[5] J. Eisenstaedt e J. C. Fabris, Amoroso Costa e o primeiro livro brasileiro sobre a Relatividade Geral, Revista Brasileira de Ensino de Física 26(2), 185 (2004).
[6] H. Weyl, Raum, Zeit, Materie: Vorlesungenüber allgemeine Relativitätstheorie (Springer, Berlin, 1918). Tradução para inglês da quarta edição, de 1921: H. Weyl, Space, Time, Matter (Dover, New York, 1952).
[7] P. A. Schilpp (ed.), Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist (The Library of Living Philosophers, Evanston, 1949).
[8] H. Gutfreund e J. Renn, Einstein on Einstein: Autobiographical and Scientific Reflections (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2020).
[9] D. Kormos-Buchwald, The Einstein Papers Project 1955–2005 , in Albert Einstein, Chief Engineer of the Universe: One Hundred Authors for Einstein, editado por J. Renn (Wiley-VCH, Weinheim, 2005), 448–452.
[10] T. Hartz e O. Freire Jr., A série de conferências History of Quantum Physics: Um breve panorama da consolidação da pesquisa em história da física quântica nos últimos dez anos, Boletim Eletrônico da Sociedade Brasileira de História da Ciência 6 (2015).
[11] J. Norton, How Einstein Found His Field Equations: 1912-1915, Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 14(2), 253 (1984). Reimpresso em: D. Howard e J. Stachel (eds.), Einstein and the History of General Relativity, Einstein Studies, vol. 1 (Birkhäuser, Boston, 1989), 101–159.
[12] A. Pais, ‘Subtle is the Lord...’: The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein (Oxford University Press, 1982). Tradução para o português: A. Pais, Sutil é o Senhor: A Ciência e a Vida de Albert Einstein (Nova Fronteira, Rio de Janeiro, 2005).
[13] M. Janssen e J. Renn, How Einstein Found His Field Equations: Sources and Interpretation (Birkhäuser, Cham, 2022).
[14] M. Janssen et al. (eds.), The Genesis of General Relativity, vol. 1–4 (Springer, Berlin, 2007).
[15] J. Renn e T. Sauer, Errors and Insights: Reconstructing the Genesis of General Relativity from Einstein’s Zurich Notebook , in Reworking the Bench: Research Notebooks in the History of Science, editado por F. L. Holmes, J. Renn e H.-J. Rheinberger (Springer, Dordrecht, 2003), 253–268.
[16] M. Janssen e J. Renn, Arch and scaffold: How Einstein found his field equations, Physics Today 68(11), 30 (2015).
[17] J. Eisenstaedt, La relativité générale à l’étiage: 1925–1955, Archive for History of Exact Sciences 35(2), 115 (1986). Versão resumida em inglês: J. Eisenstaedt, The Low Water Mark of General Relativity, 1925–1955, in Einstein and the History of General Relativity, editado por D. Howard e J. Stachel (Birkhäuser, Boston, 1989), 277–292.
[18] J. Eisenstaedt, Einstein et la relativité générale: Les chemins de l’espace-temps (CNRS Editions, Paris, 2002). Tradução para o inglês: J. Eisenstaedt, The Curious History of Relativity: How Einstein’s Theory of Gravity Was Lost and Found Again (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2006).
[19] M. Paty, Einstein philosophe: La physique comme pratique philosophique (Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1993).
[20] M. Paty, Einstein, ou A Criação Científica do Mundo (Estação Liberdade, São Paulo, 2008).
[21] D. Cantimori, Storici e storia: metodo, caratteristiche e significato del lavoro storiografico (Einaudi, Turim, 1971).
[22] P. Galison, Material Culture, Theoretical Culture, and Delocalization, in Collection, Laboratory, Theater, editado por H. Schramm, L. Schwarte e J. Lazardzig (de Grutyer, Berlin, 2005), 490–506.
[23] B. DeWitt, Quantum gravity: yesterday and today, General Relativity and Gravitation 41(2), 413 (2009).
[24] C. M. Will, Was Einstein Right? Putting General Relativity to the Test (Basic Books, New York, 1993), 2ª ed.
[25] G. Ellis, A. Lanza e J. Miller (eds.), The Renaissance of General Relativity and Cosmology: A Survey to Celebrate the 65th Birthday of Dennis Sciama (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993).
[26] D. W. Sciama, The recent renaissance of observational cosmology, Physics Bulletin 19(10), 329 (1968).
[27] D. W. Sciama, The recent renaissance of observational cosmology, in Relativity and Gravitation, editado por C. G. Kuper e A. Peres (Gordon and Breach, New York, 1971), 283–304.
[28] J. C. Miller, Relativistic gravitational collapse, in The Renaissance of General Relativity and Cosmology: A Survey to Celebrate the 65th Birthday of Dennis Sciama, editado por G. Ellis, A. Lanza e J. Miller (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993), 73–85.
[29] D. Kaiser, A ψ is just a ψ? Pedagogy, Practice, and the Reconstitution of General Relativity, 1942–1975, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 29(3), 321 (1998).
[30] A. Einstein, The Meaning of Relativity: Four Lectures Delivered at Princeton University, May, 1921 (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1922). Reproduzido com os apêndices em: H. Gutfreund e J. Renn, The Formative Years of Relativity: The History and Meaning of Einstein’s Princeton Lectures (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2017), 159–359.
[31] P. G. Bergmann, Introduction to the theory of relativity (Prentice-Hall, New York, 1942).
[32] R. P. Feynman, Lectures on Gravitation. Reading (Addison-Wesley, Reading, 1995). Nova edição: R. P. Feynman, Feynman Lectures on Gravitation (CRC Press, Boca Raton, 2018). A citação foi feita a partir desta edição mais recente.
[33] D. J. Griffiths, D. Derbes e R. B. Sohn (eds.), Sidney Coleman’s Lectures on Relativity (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2022).
[34] D. Kennefick, Traveling at the Speed of Thought: Einstein and the Quest for Gravitational Waves (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2007).
[35] A. Blum, R. Lalli e J. Renn, The Reinvention of General Relativity: A Historiographical Framework for Assessing One Hundred Years of Curved Space-time, Isis 106(3), 598 (2015).
[36] A. S. Blum, R. Lalli e J. Renn, The renaissance of General Relativity: How and why it happened, Annalen der Physik 528(5), 344 (2016).
[37] A. Blum et al., Editorial introduction to the special issue “The Renaissance of Einstein’s Theory of Gravitation”, The European Physical Journal H 42(2), 95 (2017).
[38] A. Blum, R. Lalli e J. Renn (eds.), The Renaissance of General Relativity in Context (Birkhäuser, Cham, 2020).
[39] A. S. Blum e D. Rickles, Quantum Gravity in the First Half of the Twentieth Century: A Sourcebook (Edition Open Access, Berlin, 2018).
[40] D. Rickles, Covered with Deep Mist: The Development of Quantum Gravity (1916-1956) (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2020).
[41] R. Lalli, Building the General Relativity and Gravitation Community During the Cold War (Springer, Cham, 2017).
[42] J. Norton, Einstein’s Pathway to General Relativity, Einstein for Everyone (disciplina de graduação na Universidade de Pittsburgh). Disponível em https://sites.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/teaching/HPS_0410/chapters/general_relativity_pathway/index.html, acesso em mar. 2025.
[43] D. Cardoso e I. Gurgel, A complementaridade dos pensamentos narrativo e matemático na gestação da teoria da Relatividade Geral, Caderno Brasileiro de Ensino de Física 34(3), 745 (2017).
[44] M. Stanley, “An Expedition to Heal the Wounds of War”: The 1919 Eclipse and Eddington as Quaker Adventurer, Isis 94(1), 57 (2003).
[45] D. Kennefick, No Shadow of a Doubt: The 1919 Eclipse That Confirmed Einstein’s Theory of Relativity (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2019).
[46] V. P. Vizgin, Unified Field Theories in the first third of the 20th century (Birkhäuser, 1994).
[47] H. F. M. Goenner, On the History of Unified Field Theories, Living Reviews in Relativity 7(1), article number 2 (2004).
[48] J. v. Dongen, Einstein’s Unification (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2010).
[49] H. F. M. Goenner, On the History of Unified Field Theories. Part II. (ca. 1930–ca. 1965), Living Reviews in Relativity 17(1), article number 5 (2014).
[50] F. Cardin e R. Tazzioli, Levi-Civita simplifies Einstein. The Ricci rotation coefficients and unified field theories, Archive for History of Exact Sciences 78(1), 87 (2024).
[51] M. C. Bustamante, Jacques Solomon (1908-1942): profil d’un physicien théoricien dans la France des années trente, Revue d’histoire des sciences 50(1), 49 (1997).
[52] G. E. Gorelik, Matvei Bronstein and quantum gravity: 70th anniversary of the unsolved problem, Physics-Uspekhi 48(10), 1039 (2005).
[53] D. C. Salisbury, Léon Rosenfeld’s pioneering steps toward a quantum theory of gravity, Journal of Physics: Conference Series 222, 012052 (2010).
[54] T. Hartz e O. Freire Jr., Uses and appropriations of Niels Bohr’s ideas about quantum field measurement, 1930-1965 , in One Hundred Years of the Bohr Atom, editado por F. Aaserud e H. Kragh (The Royal Danish Academy of Science and Letters, Copenhagen, 2015), 397–418.
[55] A. Blum e T. Hartz, The 1957 quantum gravity meeting in Copenhagen: An analysis of Bryce S. DeWitt’s report, The European Physical Journal H 42(2), 107 (2017).
[56] G. Gorelik, The drama of ideas in the history of quantum gravity: Niels Bohr, Lev Landau, and Matvei Bronstein, The European Physical Journal H 49(1), article number 18 (2024).
[57] H. Kragh, Cosmology and Controversy: The Historical Development of Two Theories of the Universe (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1996).
[58] D. Salisbury, Rosenfeld, Bergmann, Dirac and the Invention of Constrained Hamiltonian Dynamics, in The Eleventh Marcel Grossmann Meeting: On Recent Developments in Theoretical and Experimental General Relativity, editado por H. Kleinert, R. Jantzen e R. Ruffini (Word Scientific, Singapore, 2008), 2467–2469.
[59] R. P. Feynman, “What Do You Care What Other People Think?”: Further Adventures of a Curious Character (Norton, New York, 1988).
[60] T. Kuhn, A estrutura das revoluções científicas (Perspectiva, São Paulo, 1962).
[61] A. Mercier, General Relativity at the Turning Point of Its Renewal , in Studies in the History of General Relativity, editado por J. Eisenstaedt e A. Kox (Birkhäuser, Boston, 1992), 109–121.
[62] C. DeWitt-Morette, The Pursuit of Quantum Gravity: Memoirs of Bryce DeWitt from 1946 to 2004 (Springer, Berlin, 2011).
[63] D. Rickles, The Chapel Hill Conference in Context, in The Role of Gravitation in Physics: Report from the 1957 Chapel Hill Conference, editado por C. DeWitt-Morette e D. Rickles (Edition Open Access, Berlin, 2011), 7–21.
[64] T. Hartz, As heterodoxias quânticas e o olhar do historiador: Uma história dos usos dos argumentos de Niels Bohr acerca da medição de campos quânticos (1930–1970), Tese de Doutorado, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ensino, Filosofia e História das Ciências, Universidade Federal da Bahia (2013).
[65] D. Kaiser e D. Rickles, The Price of Gravity: Private Patronage and the Transformation of Gravitational Physics after World War II, Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 48(3), 338 (2018).
[66] A. Mercier e J. Schaer, General information, Bulletin of General Relativity and Gravitation 1(1), 1 (1962).
[67] H. Goenner, A golden age of general relativity? Some remarks on the history of general relativity, General Relativity and Gravitation 49(3), article number 42 (2017).
[68] A. Lichnerowicz, Mathematics and General Relativity: A Recollection, in Studies in the History of General Relativity, editado por J. Eisenstaedt e A. Kox (Birkhäuser, Boston, 1992), 103–108.
[69] J. C. Ferreira, A trajetória de Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat na matemática, na física e na sociedade do século XX, Dissertação de Mestrado, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ensino de Matemática, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (2024).
[70] S. Deser, The ADM version of GR at Sixty: a brief account for historians, The European Physical Journal H 46(1), article number 14 (2021).
[71] G. ’t Hooft (ed.), 50 Years of Yang-Mills (World Scientific, Singapore, 2005).
[72] P. J. E. Peebles, Robert Dicke and the naissance of experimental gravity physics, 1957–1967, The European Physical Journal H 42(2), 177 (2017).
[73] V. Trimble, Wired by Weber: The story of the first searcher and searches for gravitational waves, The European Physical Journal H 42(2), 261 (2017).
[74] H. Collins, Gravity’s Kiss: The Detection of Gravitational Waves (MIT Press, Cambridge, 2017).
[75] R. Babson, Gravity—Our enemy number one, in H. Collins, Gravity’s Shadow: The Search for Gravitational Waves (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2004), 828–831.
[76] J. Goldberg, US Air Force support of general relativity, 1956–1972 , in Studies in the History of General Relativity, editado por J. Eisenstaedt e A. Kox (Birkhäuser, Boston, 1992), 89–102.
[77] R. Lalli, R. Howey e D. Wintergrün, The dynamics of collaboration networks and the history of general relativity, 1925–1970, Scientometrics 122(2), 1129 (2020).
[78] R. Lalli, R. Howey e D. Wintergrün, The Socio-Epistemic Networks of General Relativity, 1925–1970 , in The Renaissance of General Relativity in Context, editado por A. Blum, R. Lalli e J. Renn (Birkhäuser, Cham, 2020), 15–84.
[79] R. Lalli, The Multiple Lives of the General Relativity Community, 1955–1974 , in Biographies in the History of Physics, editado por M. Forstner, Christian; Walker (Springer, Cham, 2020), 179–202.
[80] A. S. Wright, The Advantages of Bringing Infinity to a Finite Place, Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 44(2), 99 (2014).
[81] D. Salisbury, A history of observables and Hamilton–Jacobi approaches to general relativity, The European Physical Journal H 47(1), article number 7 (2022).
[82] I. d. C. Moreira, O eclipse solar de 1919, Einstein e a mídia brasileira, Ciência e Cultura 71(3), 32 (2019).
[83] R. N. d. Silva Júnior e C. H. d. M. Barboza, História e memória de vidro: as fotografias brasileiras do eclipse de 1919 em Sobral, História, Ciências, Saúde-Manguinhos 27(3), 983 (2020).
[84] J. Y. F. Silva, Mulheres na relatividade geral, 1945–1968: Trajetórias, projetos e o renascimento da teoria, Dissertação de mestrado, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ensino de Matemática, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (2024).
[85] B. S. DeWitt, Exploratory research session on the quantization of the gravitational field: At the Institute for Theoretical Physics, Copenhagen, Denmark, June-July 1957, The European Physical Journal H 42(2), 159 (2017).
[86] V. P. Vizgin e G. E. Gorelik, The Reception of the Theory of Relativity in Russia and the USSR, in The Comparative Reception of Relativity, editado por T. F. Glick (Springer, Berlin, 1987), 265–326.
[87] J.-P. Martinez, The Fock-Infeld Dispute: An Illustration of the Renaissance of General Relativity in the Soviet Union, in The Renaissance of General Relativity in Context, editado por A. Blum, R. Lalli e J. Renn (Springer, Cham, 2020), 113–139.
[88] A. Koyré, Estudos de história do pensamento filosófico (Forense Universitária, Rio de Janeiro, 1991).
Downloads
Publicado
Como Citar
Edição
Seção
Licença
Copyright (c) 2025 Juliana Correia Ferreira, Juliana Youssef, Thiago Hartz

Este trabalho está licenciado sob uma licença Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.