The paper argues that general relativity and special relativity address different aspects of physics, suggesting clarity in their roles.
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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