Einstein: To what extent is the special theory of relativity supported by experience?
AAF: It depends on whom you ask. If you ask a Relativist like (Cincirob), you will be told that it's supported to the most extent. But If you ask an Anti-relativist like (Pentcho), you will be told that it is not supported to any measurable extent.
Einstein: This question is not easily answered for the reason already mentioned in connection with the fundamental experiment of Fizeau.
AAF: And that reason, of course, was: "Now in practice we can move clocks and measuring-rods only with velocities that are small compared with the velocity of light; hence we shall hardly be able to compare the results of the previous section directly with the reality. But, on the other hand, these results must strike you as being very singular, and for that reason I shall now draw another conclusion from the theory, one which can easily be derived from the foregoing considerations, and which has been most elegantly confirmed by experiment"!
Einstein: The special theory of relativity has crystallised out from the Maxwell-Lorentz theory of electromagnetic phenomena.
AAF:"Crystallised out from the Maxwell-Lorentz theory of electromagnetic phenomena" is an overstatement! Let's just say, here, that it was put forwards as a helper hypothesis to save the old theory from its serious anomalies.
Einstein: Thus all facts of experience which support the electromagnetic theory also support the theory of relativity.
AAF: Not exactly, Albert!
Special Relativity, as expected, has no choice but to reinterpret every experimental result previously interpreted by the Aether theory.
But, more often than not, the interpretations and the reinterpretations are quite different from each other.
As an example, if Monsieur Fizeau were to see your reinterpretation of his experiment, he would not have recognized his experimental finding in it.
