This analysis clarifies the misconceptions about special relativity and its role in describing spacetime, suggesting a clearer distinction between theoretical frameworks.
The common narrative that general relativity (GR) supersedes special relativity (SR) mistakenly treats SR as a theory of a flat 4D container, i.e., globally-extended Minkowskian manifold. We argue this characterization rests on a fundamental category error that conflates a meta-theoretic kinematic constraint (Lorentz invariance) with a dynamic law of motion (Einstein's field equations). Viewed from modern physics and differential geometry, SR is not an architecture for a global spacetime; rather, it is a local symmetry principle acting strictly within a linear tangent space. Global geometry is a dynamic feature of GR, not the purview of SR.
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Harry Yoon (2026) studied this question.
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