The Good Thing About Einstein's Relativity

The good thing about Einstein's relativity is that it started as a DEDUCTIVE theory. There was plagiarism, one of the postulates was false, there were unstated (hidden) auxiliary hypotheses, a crucial argument was invalid - yet Einstein's 1905 special relativity, unlike Einstein's 1915 general relativity, CAN be called a theory:

http://cdn.preterhuman.net/texts/tho...%20science.pdf
W. H. Newton-Smith, THE RATIONALITY OF SCIENCE, p. 199: "By a theory I shall mean the deductive closure of a set of theoretical postulates together with an appropriate set of auxiliary hypotheses; that is, everything that can be deduced from this set."

Only a deductive theory (in physics, "non-deductive theory" is an oxymoron) can be falsified, either logically or experimentally. That is:

1. Arguments can be checked for validity.

2. The reductio-ad-absurdum procedure can be applied.

3. Showing, experimentally, that a postulate or a deduced consequence is false makes sense - the deductive structure allows one to interpret the falsehood in terms of the whole theory. In the absence of a deductive structure any falsehood remains insignificant - one can either ignore it or "fix" it by introducing some fudge factor.

Pentcho Valev