Unnoticed Theorem of Relativistic Mechanics

Abstract

MECHANICS has always been conceived primarily as a description—or better, as a formulation—of certain processes of nature. But eventually it was recognized that theoretical mechanics deserves to be studied in its own right as an abstract formalism, and that our understanding of the processes of nature has thereby been decisively deepened. But although this holds for classical mechanics, the same cannot be said about relativistic mechanics, which has been investigated almost exclusively in terms of its comparatively few applications.