This Element presents the philosophy of special relativity: from the
foundations of the theory in Newtonian mechanics, through its birth out
of the ashes of 19th Century ether theory, through the various
conceptual paradoxes which the theory presents, and finally arriving at
some of its connections with Einstein's later theory of general
relativity. It illustrates concepts such as inertial frames, force-free
motion, and dynamical versus geometrical understandings of physics, the
standard hierarchy of classical spacetimes, the concept of a symmetry of
a physical theory, Poincaré invariant, Einstein's 1905 derivation of the
Lorentz transformations, spacetime structure from Aristotle to
Minkowski, general covariance, dynamical and geometrical approaches to
spacetime, the conventionality of simultaneity, Frame-dependent effects,
and the twin paradox.