 How to teach special relativity by John Stewart Bell

Publisher record: doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511815676.011

Primary chapter scan: danielhoek.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Bell-How-to-teach-Special-Relativity.pdf

Originally published in Progress in Scientific Culture 1(2), 1976; reprinted in Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics. Pages 67–68 discuss the spaceship thread; pages 69–77 develop and interpret a dynamical charged-particle example. The warning about premature philosophizing occurs in note 10 on pages 79–80, after the discussion of replacing a concrete calculation by a general change-of-variables argument. The numerical-computation recommendation there is more specific than a blanket rejection of geometrical explanations.