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http://www.mfo.de/programme/schedule/2006/08c/OWR_2006_10.pdf
Jean Eisenstaedt: "At the end of the 18th century, a natural extension
of Newton's dynamics to light was developed but immediately forgotten.
A body of works completed the Principia with a relativistic optics of
moving bodies, the discovery of the Doppler-Fizeau effect some sixty
years before Doppler, and many other effects and ideas which represent
a fascinating preamble to Einstein relativities. It was simply
supposed that 'a body-light', as Newton named it, was subject to the
whole dynamics of the Principia in much the same way as were material
particles; thus it was subject to the Galilean relativity and its
velocity was supposed to be variable. Of course it was subject to the
short range 'refringent' force of the corpuscular theory of light --
which is part of the Principia-- but also to the long range force of
gravitation which induces Newton's theory of gravitation. The fact
that the 'mass' of a corpuscle of light was not known did not
constitute a problem since it does not appear in the Newtonian (or
Einsteinian) equations of motion. It was precisely what John Michell
(1724-1793), Robert Blair (1748-1828), Johann G. von Soldner (1776-
1833) and Fran¸cois Arago (1786-1853) were to do at the end of the
18th century and the beginning the 19th century in the context of
Newton's dynamics. Actually this 'completed' Newtonian theory of light
and material corpuscle seems to have been implicitly accepted at the
time. In such a Newtonian context, not only Soldner's calculation of
the deviation of light in a gravitational field was understood, but
also dark bodies (cousins of black holes). A natural (Galilean and
thus relativistic) optics of moving bodies was also developed which
easily explained aberration and implied as well the essence of what we
call today the Doppler effect. Moreover, at the same time the
structure of -- but also the questions raised by-- the Michelson
experiment was understood. Most of this corpus has long been
forgotten. The Michell-Blair-Arago effect, prior to Doppler's effect,
is entirely unknown to physicists and historians. As to the influence
of gravitation on light, the story was very superficially known but
had never been studied in any detail. Moreover, the existence of a
theory dealing with light, relativity and gravitation, embedded in
Newton's Principia was completely ignored by physicists and by
historians as well. But it was a simple and natural way to deal with
the question of light, relativity (and gravitation) in a Newtonian
context. EINSTEIN HIMSELF DID NOT KNOW OF THIS NEWTONIAN THEORY OF
LIGHT AND HE DID NOT RELY ON IT IN HIS OWN RESEARCH.

Jean Eisenstaedt is a sycophant of John Stachel's but he reads neither
the writings of his Master nor those of the cleverer Master John
Norton, let alone Divine Albert's Divine Confessions:

> http://www.aip.org/history/einstein/essay-einstein-relativity.htm
> John Stachel: "The idea that a light beam consisted of a stream of
> particles had been espoused by Newton and maintained its popularity
> into the middle of the 19th century. It was called the "emission
> theory" of light, a phrase I shall use. The need to explain the
> phenomena of interference, diffraction and polarization of light
> gradually led physicists to abandon the emission theory in favor of
> the competing wave theory, previously its less-favored rival.
> Maxwell's explanation of light as a type of electromagnetic wave
> seemed to end the controversy with a definitive victory of the wave
> theory. However, if Einstein was right (as events slowly proved he
> was) the story must be much more complicated. Einstein was aware of
> the difficulties with Maxwell's theory-and of the need for what we now
> call a quantum theory of electromagnetic radiation-well before
> publishing his SRT paper. He regarded Maxwell's equations as some sort
> of statistical average-of what he did not know, of course-which worked
> very well to explain many optical phenomena, but could not be used to
> explain all the interactions of light and matter. A notable feature of
> his first light quantum paper is that it almost completely avoids
> mention of the ether, even in discussing Maxwell's theory. Giving up
> the ether concept allowed Einstein to envisage the possibility that a
> beam of light was "an independent structure," as he put it a few years
> later, "which is radiated by the light source, just as in Newton's
> emission theory of light."......If we model a beam of light as a
> stream of particles, the two principles can still be obeyed. A few
> years later (1909), Einstein first publicly expressed the view that an
> adequate future theory of light would have to be some sort of fusion
> of the wave and emission theories. This is an example of how the
> special theory of relativity functioned as a theory of principle,
> limiting but not fixing the choice of a constructive theory of light."

> http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/homepage/cv.html#forthcoming
> "Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity and the Problems in the
> Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies that Led him to it." in Cambridge
> Companion to Einstein, M. Janssen and C. Lehner, eds., Cambridge
> University Press. Preprint.
> John Norton: "Einstein could not see how to formulate a fully
> relativistic electrodynamics merely using his new device of field
> transformations. So he considered the possibility of modifying
> Maxwell's electrodynamics in order to bring it into accord with an
> emission theory of light, such as Newton had originally conceived.
> There was some inevitability in these attempts, as long as he held to
> classical (Galilean) kinematics. Imagine that some emitter sends out a
> light beam at c. According to this kinematics, an observer who moves
> past at v in the opposite direction, will see the emitter moving at v
> and the light emitted at c+v. This last fact is the defining
> characteristic of an emission theory of light: the velocity of the
> emitter is added vectorially to the velocity of light emitted....If an
> emission theory can be formulated as a field theory, it would seem to
> be unable to determine the future course of processes from their state
> in the present. AS LONG AS EINSTEIN EXPECTED A VIABLE THEORY OF LIGHT,
> electricity and magnetism TO BE A FIELD THEORY, these sorts of
> objections would render AN EMISSION THEORY OF LIGHT INADMISSIBLE."
>
> http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/pdf/files/975547d7-2d00-433a-b7e3-4a09145525ca.pdf
> Albert Einstein: "I consider it entirely possible that PHYSICS CANNOT
> BE BASED UPON THE FIELD CONCEPT, that is on continuous structures.
> Then NOTHING WILL REMAIN of my whole castle in the air, including the
> theory of gravitation, but also nothing of the rest of contemporary
> physics."

Pentcho Valev
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