To Newtonian standards, Einstein's discovery of the earlier world obviously consisted of a number of absurd assumptions and conclusions. For this reason, he would have had little chance to get his discovery published without this single very important advantage: Because of the the universal character of the structure of the shells, this earlier world becomes a supporting medium for light and other electromagnetic radiation. With his discovery, therefore, the of old extremely important but lately very controversial aether theory could be abandoned.*

Note 32 'Ether' was already invented in the 17th century by Descartes as a kind of intermediate, that allows the propagation of light and other electromagnetic radiation in space. In 1887, however, Albert Michelson and Edward Morley unintentionally showed that this supposed ether is not sufficient.

For Einstein this advantage very likely has been the reason why, after his discovery, he contacted the Leiden professor Hendrik Antoon Lorentz, mentioned before in §5.1. At that time, Lorentz was not only the nestor of physics, but also had formulated some ingenious explanations to which the (luminiferous) ether (i.e. the earlier world) had to comply in order to be able to maintain the ether theory in practice. It hardly requires explanation that Lorentz must have assumed that space and time in ether are relative, which he did describe in 1899, in a transformation formula for the ether. So for Einstein, Lorentz was by far the most suitable person to consult. The result, however, was that a kind of panic situation arose in the highest regions of western physics. (The Leiden University was at that time leading in physics.)

Note 33 Although Sybe Izaak Rispens does not describe the above in his book 'Einstein in the Netherlands, An intellectual biography' he states that Einstein regularly came across Lorentz and that he describes Lorentz as 'the man who has meant more to me than any other person I have met later '. The picture Rispens describes about Einstein and physics in Leiden in the years afterwards, also points to a scientific 'panic situation'.*

Anyway, western physics was not amused by Einstein's discovery. All certainties of the mechanistic world view of  classical Newtonian physics had to be questioned, and important concepts had to be redefined.* The stronghold of western physics threatened to collapse. Because of the absence of a theory explaining the existence of an earlier world, there was only one alternative: The earlier world as discovered by Einstein had to be integrated into the current theory of the later world, Newtonian mechanics. 

Therefore, it is very likely that Einstein's conclusions from his 1905 thought experiments, which he later called his Special Theory of Relativity, have to be regarded as a process started in Leiden in order to establish this integration. It was by virtue of the margins of the thought experiments, that classical physics could now be modified in such a way, that it is not the course of time of a moving body itself that changes, but that the course of time only changes with respect to an other moving body.

Continue to: 5.3. Minkowski spacetime