Drawing the line between kinematics and dynamics in special relativity

Special relativity is preferable to those parts of Lorentz's classical ether theory it replaced because it shows that various phenomena that were given a dynamical explanation in Lorentz's theory are actually kinematical. In his book, Physical Relativity, Harvey Brown challenges this orthodox view. I defend it. The phenomena usually discussed in this context in the philosophical literature are length contraction and time dilation. I consider three other phenomena in the same class, each of which played a role in the early reception of special relativity in the physics literature: the Fresnel drag effect, the velocity dependence of electron mass, and the torques on a moving capacitor in the Trouton-Noble experiment. I offer historical sketches of how Lorentz's dynamical explanations of these phenomena came to be replaced by their now standard kinematical explanations. I then take up the philosophical challenge posed by the work of Harvey Brown and Oliver Pooley and clarify how those kinematical explanations work. In the process, I draw attention to the broader importance of the kinematics-dynamics distinction. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.