Special Relativity – To Be or Not to Be: Part III: A Conceptual Analysis of Fundamental Conflict Points

This article presents a structural analysis of 129 critical arguments concerningthe special theory of relativity that have previously been extracted from a numberof texts and systematically classified. Through a successive reduction processthe arguments are organized into main arguments, core arguments, fundamentalassumptions, robust argument types, and finally four fundamental criticism types.The analysis shows that a large number of individual arguments can be reducedto a limited number of principal questions concerning mathematical consistency,conceptual definition clarity, model-independent physical interpretation, andconsequence analysis of the theory’s postulates.The purpose of this work is to identify the exact conceptual points wherepotential conflicts between the criticism and the fundamental assumptions of thespecial theory of relativity may exist. The complete argument catalog and thedetailed reduction analysis are presented in separate complementary works.The result constitutes a methodological foundation for a more precise analysisof the fundamental questions that must be answered in a critical examination ofthe conceptual structure of the theory.The article also includes a principled examination of the special theory ofrelativity against these identified fundamental conflict points.The work aims at a conceptual analysis of the structure of the theory ratherthan a discussion of individual objections.Supporting materials are provided in Part I and Part II.