Eddington teacher of general relativity another tale of two textbooks

Abstract

Arthur S. Eddington (1882–1944) is known as one of the most influential astronomers of the interwar period, and a promoter of Einstein's theory of general relativity. This article focuses on two of his books, namely Space, Time and Gravitation (1920) and The Mathematical Theory of Relativity (1923). The first section claims that Eddington intended both to be textbooks, the role and content of which is detailed as well as Eddington pedagogical views. This then leads to instantiate the porosity and plasticity of the textbook genre, and to draw attention to a less studied aspect of relativistic textbooks, namely their philosophical scope. The closing section comments, for the first time, on Eddington's courses on Einstein's theory, based on archival sources.