In his 1916 review paper on general relativity, Einstein made the often-quoted oracular remark that all physical measurements amount to a determination of coincidences, like the coincidence of a pointer with a mark on a scale. This argument, which was meant to express the requirement of general covariance, immediately gained great resonance. Philosophers such as Schlick found that it expressed the novelty of general relativity, but the mathematician Kretschmann deemed it as trivial and valid in all spacetime theories. With the relevant exception of the physicists of Leiden (Ehrenfest, Lorentz, de Sitter, and Nordström), who were in epistolary contact with Einstein, the motivations behind the point-coincidence remark were not fully understood. Only at the turn of the 1960s did Bergmann (Einstein’s former assistant in Princeton) start to use the term ‘coincidence’ in a way that was much closer to Einstein’s intentions. In the 1980s, Stachel, projecting Bergmann’s analysis onto his historical work on Einstein’s correspondence, was able to show that what he started to call ‘the point-coincidence argument’ was nothing but Einstein’s answer to the infamous ‘hole argument’. The latter has enjoyed enormous popularity in the following decades, reshaping the philosophical debate on spacetime theories. The point-coincidence argument did not receive comparable attention. By reconstructing the history of the argument and its reception, this paper argues that this disparity of treatment is not justified. This paper will also show that the notion that only coincidences are observable in physics marks every critical step of Einstein’s struggle with the meaning of coordinates in physics.

爱因斯坦在他的1916年有关广义相对论的评论论文中经常提到口头评论，即所有物理测量值都等于巧合的确定，例如指针与刻度尺上的巧合的巧合。这个旨在表达一般协方差要求的论点立即引起了极大的共鸣。Schlick等哲学家发现它表达了广义相对论的新颖性，但数学家Kretschmann认为它在所有时空理论中都是微不足道且有效的。除了与爱因斯坦进行书信接触的莱顿物理学家（埃伦菲斯特，洛伦兹，德西特和诺德斯特罗姆）的相关例外外，对点巧合的说法背后的动机还没有完全理解。直到1960年代初，伯格曼（爱因斯坦在普林斯顿的前助手）才开始使用“巧合”一词，这种方式与爱因斯坦的意图更加接近。在1980年代，斯塔切尔将伯格曼的分析投影到他关于爱因斯坦对应关系的历史著作中，能够证明他开始所谓的“点重合论点”不过是爱因斯坦对臭名昭著的“空洞论点”的回答。在随后的几十年中，后者受到了极大的欢迎，从而重塑了关于时空理论的哲学辩论。点重合论点没有得到类似的关注。通过重构论证的历史及其接受，本文认为这种不平等待遇是没有道理的。