Einstein’s relativistic ether conception is today almost unknown among physicists, philosophers, and sometimes, also, historians of physics.

[W]e should be trying to count something now or, put another way, we should be trying to formulate physics in a discontinuum rather than in a continuum.

I admit that the general theory of relativity is closer to the ether hypothesis than the special theory. This new ether theory, however, would not violate the principle of relativity, because the state of this … ether would not be that of a rigid body in an independent state of motion. . . .

… [the continuum] should be banned from the theory as a supplementary construction not justified by the essence of the problem, which corresponds to nothing “real”. But we still lack the mathematical structure unfortunately. How much I have already plagued myself in this way!