http://www.scirp.org/journal/ns Natural Science, 2018, Vol. 10, (No. 3), pp: 81-84 https://doi.org/10.4236/ns.2018.103008 81 Natural Science On the Evolution of Approaches to the Space-Time Symmetry Mikhail Petelin 1 , Manfred Thumm 2 1 Institute of Applied Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia; 2 Institute for Pulsed Power and Microwave Technology, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany Correspondence to: Mikhail Petelin, petelin@appl.sci-nnov.ru; Manfred Thumm, manfred.thumm@kit.edu Keywords: Space-Time Symmetry, Ecclesiastes, Aristotle, Proclus, Galileo, Michelson, Voigt, “Aether”, Lorentz Transformation, Theory of Relativity Received: January 3, 2018 Accepted: March 4, 2018 Published: March 7, 2018 Copyright © 2018 by authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ABSTRACT The general space-time composition was analyzed starting in ancient times. During the previous three millenniums, to explain elementary physical phenomena, the world was twice admitted to be immersed into an “aether”. Presently the “aether” is assumed to be asymp- totically close to the vacuum. This approximation is included in the foundation of the spe- cial theory of relativity. 1. ANCIENT SPACE-TIME SYMMETRY Primary opinions about the world harmony and symmetry were summarized by the Ecclesiastes (King Solomon, 990-931 BC) [1]: “Everything has its own time, and nothing is new under the Sun”. A half millennium later, Aristotle (384-322 BC) turned prone to the “horror vacuum” and speculated that the nature is immersed into an “aether” [2]. Another millennium later, Proclus (412-485 AD—the last head of the Athens Academy) dismissed Aristotle’s absolute reference frame for being not related to any physical phenomena [3]. 2. GALILEO’S REFERENCE FRAMES The ancient-Greek συμμετρείν (symmetrein = measure together) [3] was further developed by Gali- leo (1564-1642) [4, 5] who used to illustrate the equivalence of all inertial reference frames with floating boats (Figure 1), where the times τ , τ ′ would be measured with beats of the man’s heart and the coordinates ξ , ξ ′ would be measured with steps of the man’s foot (the two sailors being assumed identical). By imposing a common time-coordinate unit (conditionally equal to M beats of heart = N steps of foot = 1 buck), the space-time homogeneity-isotropy [1, 3, 5] might be met, if the times τ , τ ′ and coor- dinates ξ , ξ ′ were interrelated with modernized [6-8] symmetric equations as Open Access