> General relativity was a way to solve anomalies in the orbit of Mercury, something only detectable with precise measurement. Without it, general relativity wo

> General relativity was a way to solve anomalies in the orbit of Mercury, something only detectable with precise measurement. Without it, general relativity would make no sense: why use all these complex formulas when Newton gravity works just as well? Send Einstein's work to the 16th century and it will be slashed by Occam's razor. I don't think that's entirely true. As far as I know, the Mercury precession anomaly wasn't considered a serious problem to Newton's theory at the time. Einstein was motivated by theoretical problems that arose from trying to reconcile Newton's theory with special relativity, which inspired him to take the principle of equivalence seriously: the notion that gravitational mass and inertial mass are fundamentally the same. This is what lead to the famous field equations. Their derivation is not some sort of reverse engineering of the Mercury precession anomaly. Someone wrote a few words about it here [1]. The fact that GR could explain the Mercury anomaly was a bonus. The break through, however, came with the first measurement of light being deflected by the sun during a solar eclipse. Einstein's GR truly came out of nowhere. [1] https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/622/what-was-einsteins-motivation-for-relativity-theory https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/622/what-was-einstei...