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How did Einstein Think?

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Re: How did Einstein Think?

#61

Post by JoeAltmaier »

logicallee wrote: post #60
titzer wrote: post #10

Like many people, Einstein's life and work has been fascinating to me, but in comparison to other brilliant scientists of the twentieth century, there are at least a handful if not a dozen or couple of dozen people who were and are equally as intelligent, brilliant, and more prolific. That said, I find Einstein-worship annoying. The cultural obsession with Einstein and cult of personality detracts from the reality th…

Maybe I'm going slightly too far, but I can imagine a world in which we don't know relativity but use quantum mechanical effects daily (e.g. at the microchip level.) Can you not imagine such a world? Granted space exploration would have had to not-happen. It's at the limit of what I can imagine in a world. Can you imagine the above historical scenario today? (2015) One hundred years on from when General Relativity ac…

And why not integrated circuits, the instant photography was invented? Some interesting steampunk science fiction could be written around that.

Re: How did Einstein Think?

#62

Post by Retra »

dannylandau wrote: post #22
titzer wrote: post #10

Like many people, Einstein's life and work has been fascinating to me, but in comparison to other brilliant scientists of the twentieth century, there are at least a handful if not a dozen or couple of dozen people who were and are equally as intelligent, brilliant, and more prolific. That said, I find Einstein-worship annoying. The cultural obsession with Einstein and cult of personality detracts from the reality th…

Not sure I would agree with that sentiment. Einstein was considered to be exceptional even by his peers. I've read quite a few biographies of of prominent/famous scientists, including Teller, Bohr, Fermi, Pauli, Landau, Feynman, Bethe, Von Neumann, Abraham Pais, Weisskopf, Wigner, etc.. and almost all revere Einstein and put him on the same pedestal as Isaac Newton (and in Mathematician case -- Karl Gauss). Based on…

Supposedly Landau made a 1-5 scale of physicists productivity. If I recall correctly, Newton and Einstein were the only ones he put in the 1 bracket.

Re: How did Einstein Think?

#63

Post by [deleted] »

dannylandau wrote: post #22
titzer wrote: post #10

Like many people, Einstein's life and work has been fascinating to me, but in comparison to other brilliant scientists of the twentieth century, there are at least a handful if not a dozen or couple of dozen people who were and are equally as intelligent, brilliant, and more prolific. That said, I find Einstein-worship annoying. The cultural obsession with Einstein and cult of personality detracts from the reality th…

Not sure I would agree with that sentiment. Einstein was considered to be exceptional even by his peers. I've read quite a few biographies of of prominent/famous scientists, including Teller, Bohr, Fermi, Pauli, Landau, Feynman, Bethe, Von Neumann, Abraham Pais, Weisskopf, Wigner, etc.. and almost all revere Einstein and put him on the same pedestal as Isaac Newton (and in Mathematician case -- Karl Gauss). Based on…

[deleted]

Re: How did Einstein Think?

#64

Post by Retra »

titzer wrote: post #18
ok_craig wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why people are always so interested in cutting down other peoples' heroes. "Oh, Einstein wasn't special, if he didn't get it, the next guy would have. Check out these folks instead." Somehow not sensing the irony that if we all did then worship the other ones you're talking about, you or someone like you would then just make the same claims on those people.. that they're not special, it was about timing and…

No, sorry. It's not about me at all. If I felt like I was special for having different heroes than everyone else then I wouldn't bother trying to draw attention to their accomplishments. It's about our culture's disproportionate focus on one particular person and their contributions to the exclusion of a much more complicated reality.

People often forget that, in addition to being brilliant, Einstein also had some of the best training available. He was a student to some very big names.

Re: How did Einstein Think?

#65

Post by eru »

Retra wrote: post #62
dannylandau wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure I would agree with that sentiment. Einstein was considered to be exceptional even by his peers. I've read quite a few biographies of of prominent/famous scientists, including Teller, Bohr, Fermi, Pauli, Landau, Feynman, Bethe, Von Neumann, Abraham Pais, Weisskopf, Wigner, etc.. and almost all revere Einstein and put him on the same pedestal as Isaac Newton (and in Mathematician case -- Karl Gauss). Based on…

Supposedly Landau made a 1-5 scale of physicists productivity. If I recall correctly, Newton and Einstein were the only ones he put in the 1 bracket.

But only because von Neumann was a philosopher.

Before Newton, physics used to be called natural philosophy. Newton made it tractable.

Before von Neumann, strategy was philosophy.

("But it's so simple. All I have to do is divine from what I know of you: are you the sort of man who would put the poison into his own goblet or his enemy's? Now, a clever man would put the poison into his own goblet, because he would know that only a great fool would reach for what he was given. I am not a great fool, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you. But you must have known I was not a great fool, you would have counted on it, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me.")

After von Neumann, strategy became tractable.

(Obviously, this view of history is very simplified.)

Re: How did Einstein Think?

#66

Post by nilkn »

titzer wrote: post #10

Like many people, Einstein's life and work has been fascinating to me, but in comparison to other brilliant scientists of the twentieth century, there are at least a handful if not a dozen or couple of dozen people who were and are equally as intelligent, brilliant, and more prolific. That said, I find Einstein-worship annoying. The cultural obsession with Einstein and cult of personality detracts from the reality th…

I think you're really underestimating how influential Einstein's work was. I can't think of another physicist besides Newton himself whose impact is comparable to Einstein's. Maxwell might be a close runner up (and Einstein himself said as much). In terms of lasting impact, Einstein clearly deserves the credit he gets.

At the same time, I think you're also underestimating how much credit other physicists get. Anybody who has studied some physics knows how profound and significant Feynman, Maxwell, Dirac, Schrödinger, Landau, Pauli, Fermi, etc., all were. In fact, Feynman might get even more adoration among physics undergraduates than Einstein.

But Feynman's work on renormalizing quantum electrodynamics, while one of the great accomplishments of 20th century physics, still did not have the sheer impact of general relativity, which had such far-reaching and grand predictions about the cosmos that many of them took 50+ years to verify. Kip Thorne doesn't identify the "golden age" of GR as even beginning until 1960, when scientists were finally able to not only understand its implications better but also verify them.

Even today Einstein has some predictions that remain to be completely verified (e.g., gravitational waves).

Re: How did Einstein Think?

#67

Post by cbd1984 »

las_cases wrote: post #17
titzer wrote: post #10

Like many people, Einstein's life and work has been fascinating to me, but in comparison to other brilliant scientists of the twentieth century, there are at least a handful if not a dozen or couple of dozen people who were and are equally as intelligent, brilliant, and more prolific. That said, I find Einstein-worship annoying. The cultural obsession with Einstein and cult of personality detracts from the reality th…

> there are at least a handful if not a dozen or couple of dozen people who were and are equally as intelligent, brilliant, and more prolific. I can guess at least one: Nikola Tesla. May I ask you what other names do you have in mind?

Gauss.

Von Neumann.

Erdős.

Euler.

Re: How did Einstein Think?

#68

Post by cbd1984 »

spenuke wrote: post #4
johnchristopher wrote: post #2

Off-topic: That's a bizarre layout.

It's for this antiquated technology called a "book", where you lay out every other page to the right or left, respectively, to account for this thing that people once called a "margin".

That isn't what's bizarre about it.

Re: How did Einstein Think?

#69

Post by dannylandau »

Retra wrote: post #62
dannylandau wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure I would agree with that sentiment. Einstein was considered to be exceptional even by his peers. I've read quite a few biographies of of prominent/famous scientists, including Teller, Bohr, Fermi, Pauli, Landau, Feynman, Bethe, Von Neumann, Abraham Pais, Weisskopf, Wigner, etc.. and almost all revere Einstein and put him on the same pedestal as Isaac Newton (and in Mathematician case -- Karl Gauss). Based on…

Supposedly Landau made a 1-5 scale of physicists productivity. If I recall correctly, Newton and Einstein were the only ones he put in the 1 bracket.

Yap, and he made a 1-5 scale for good looking girls as well when he was studying in Germany. Like science, he felt that the best physics development have already been done, and all the best looking girls taken. (Disclaimer: no relation to Lev, even though we share the same name).

Re: How did Einstein Think?

#70

Post by eru »

logicallee wrote: post #60
titzer wrote: post #10

Like many people, Einstein's life and work has been fascinating to me, but in comparison to other brilliant scientists of the twentieth century, there are at least a handful if not a dozen or couple of dozen people who were and are equally as intelligent, brilliant, and more prolific. That said, I find Einstein-worship annoying. The cultural obsession with Einstein and cult of personality detracts from the reality th…

Maybe I'm going slightly too far, but I can imagine a world in which we don't know relativity but use quantum mechanical effects daily (e.g. at the microchip level.) Can you not imagine such a world? Granted space exploration would have had to not-happen. It's at the limit of what I can imagine in a world. Can you imagine the above historical scenario today? (2015) One hundred years on from when General Relativity ac…

Quantum Mechanics includes special relativity.
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