Abstract With the classical distinction between context of discovery and context of justification considered by many to have been overcome, heuristics (understood in a broad sense) has increasingly rekindled the interest of philosophers of science. Building on this trend, a heuristic approach to the Voigt transformation (based on Rescher’s Aporetics) is first presented – a topic on which there seem to be no precedents in the literature. Second, the value of this approach is defended from a philosophical (and, indirectly, pedagogical) viewpoint. By using this approach, several conceptual links in the theory of space-time can be highlighted (links which go unnoticed in classical hypothetical-deductive methods leading to the Voigt transformation). Third, Rescher’s aporetics also suggests a heuristic path from the previously obtained Voigt transformation to the Lorentz transformation. Taken together, the proposed heuristic route enables the structure of the conceptual process underpinning the following chain of links (obviously not logical, but heuristic) Galileo ⇒ Voigt ⇒ Lorentz to be presented in an original and unified form. According to this route, an interesting sense is thus established in that the Voigt transformation occupies a natural place between the Galilean and Lorentz transformations.
Jon Pérez Laraudogoitia (Mon,) studied this question.