Why study Einstein’s relativity from a cultural point of view—the theory as well as the universal consensus it receives? From 1919 a theory that is almost impossible to make understandable to those who are not specialists enjoys generalized consensus among specialists and a popularity by the public of the whole world which has remained unchanged until the present. Ernst Gehrcke was the first to think that it was necessary to study relativity from a cultural point of view, and to attempt this.

In this 1937 essay Stebbing analyzed the general philosophical conclusions that James Jeans and Arthur Eddington drew from the new quantum physics, as well as the many contaminations of their language with popular culture. The essay is an unitary cultural study about the position of natural science in the context of the twentieth century. Through ill-thought philosophical conclusions, science enters an area of indistinction with respect to the metaphors we build to make our existence justified.

Science at the Crossroads was published by Herbert Dingle in 1972 at the end of a gruelling controversy with the English scientific world about the clock paradox in Einstein's special relativity. It is a seminal text, which allows us to understand and evaluate, with Cartesian clarity, the problem of that paradox. The essay contains a great wealth of philosophical and epistemological ideas and has a classic imprint, rich with sharp and clear distinctions, and very elegant in style.