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
General relativity (cf. below). The actual measurements show that free-falling frames are the ones in which light propagates as it does in special relativity. The generalization of this statement, namely that the laws of special relativity hold to good approximation in freely falling (and non-rotating) reference frames, is known as the Einstein equivalence principle, a crucial guiding principle for generalizing special-relativistic physics to include gravity. The same experimental data shows that time as measured by clocks in a gravitational field—proper time, to give the technical term—does not follow the rules of special relativity. In the language of spacetime geometry, it is not