Heuristics versus Norms: On the Relativistic Responses to the Kaufmannn ExperimentsI Jan Potters1 Centre for Philosophical Psychology, Department of Philosophy, University of Antwerp, Grote Kauwenberg 18, 2000 Antwerpen, Belgium Abstract The aim of this article is to provide a historical response to Michel Janssen's (2009) claim that the special theory of relativity establishes that relativistic phenomena are purely kinematical in nature, and that the relativistic study of such phenomena is completely independent of the dynamics of the systems displaying such behavior. This response will be formulated through a histori- cal discussion of one of Janssen's cases, the experiments carried out by Walter Kaufmann on the velocity-dependence of the electron's mass. Through a dis- cussion of the different responses formulated by early adherents of the princi- ple of relativity (Albert Einstein, Max Planck, Hermann Minkowski and Max von Laue) to these experiments, it will be argued that the historical devel- opment of the special theory of relativity argues against Janssen's historical IThe author would like to thank Richard Staley, Hasok Chang, Marco Giovanelli, Har- vey Brown, Dennis Lehmkuhl, Thomas Ryckman, and the audiences at the Fifth Young Researchers Day in Logic, History and Philosophy of Science 2016 (Brussels), the Forum Scientiarium Summerschools of 2017 and 2018 (T¨ubingen),and the EPSA 2017 confer- ence (Exeter). This article was partially written during a stay as a visiting student at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge (UK). Email address:
[email protected] (Jan Potters) 1Corresponding Author, Research Funded by the FWO (Research Foundation { Flan- ders) Preprint submitted to Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern PhysicsFebruary 12, 2019 presentation of the case, and that this raises questions about his general philosophical claim.