Principle of relativity those frames do not, in general experience, seem to abide by the same laws of physics. In classical physics, fictitious forces are used to describe acceleration in non-inertial reference frames. The special principle of relativity was first explicitly enunciated by Galileo Galilei in 1632 in his "Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems", using the metaphor of Galileo's ship. Newtonian mechanics added to the special principle several other concepts, including laws of motion, gravitation, and an assertion of an absolute time. When formulated in the context of these laws, the special principle of relativity states that the laws of mechanics
Relativity priority dispute and length contraction and time dilation ""are merely apparent phenomena due to motion with respect to the ether"". This is the fundamental difference in the two principal approaches to relativity theory, namely that of "Lorentz and Poincaré" on one side, and "Einstein and Minkowski" on the other side. Whittaker (1954) stated that David Hilbert had derived the theory of General Relativity from an elegant variational principle "almost simultaneously" with Einstein's discovery of the theory. From Fölsing's 1993 (English translation 1998) Einstein biography " Hilbert, like all his other colleagues, acknowledged Einstein as the sole creator of relativity theory." In 1997,