As B.J. Hiley's Foreword explains, the lectures given by David Bohm - which make up this classic textbook, The Special Theory of Relativity - were not intended to verse the students in a high level of manipulative skill in mathematics; instead they were explorations of the conceptual structure and the ideas that lay behind the theories.

The book presents the theory of relativity as a unified whole. By showing that the concepts of this theory are interrelated to form a unified totality David Bohm supplements some of the more specialist courses which have tended to give students a fragmentary impression of the logical and conceptual nature of physics as a whole.