Newton vs Leibiniz

[Hegemonicretribution]

I was studying the origin of the age old scientific and philosophical problem of absolute space versus relative space and was wondering if someone could explain to me why they hold a particular view. Whether it is Leibiniz or Einstein being relative, I still can't decide beyond all shadow of a doubt which has more to its merit.

At the moment I favour the view that space relativistic, but I was wondering for more detailed arguments to the contrary.

[ComradeRed]

I was studying the origin of the age old scientific and philosophical problem of absolute space versus relative space and was wondering if someone could explain to me why they hold a particular view. Whether it is Leibiniz or Einstein being relative, I still can't decide beyond all shadow of a doubt which has more to its merit. I think Einstein has more merit because he had the tools to create something effective whereas Leibniz was simply *****ing about Newton's theft of calculus.

I personally admire Newton's system for incorporating the previous work done in Astronomy without openly saying "And if we assume Kepler is true,...". But I think Newton did know that absolute spacetime was absurd, yet the genius of Newton was in leaving this for someone else (Einstein) to solve.

Take the Mercury perihelion, for example. Mercury has to some how escape the gravitational pull from the sun to be somewhere else completely in absolute spacetime. yet when we use relativistic spacetime, it is a simple explanation of gravitational distortion of spacetime ;)

If you are really interested in studying this on the graduate level, Gravitation is a damn good book that does it better than everyone else. It starts with Special relativity and Newtonian mechanics, then walks step by step to relative spacetime (with damn hard math!).