Re: Shrug

Androcles wrote:
> <surrealistic-dream@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> news:1132844305.577105.145210@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
....
> >> Einstein said "As has already been shown to the first order
> >> of small quantities (by Galileo, but the secret to creativity
> >> is knowing how to hide your sources so we won't mention him)
> >
> > Reference for this paraphrase, please.
>
> Certainly. <shrug>
>
....
>
> Google for Einstein's trivial quotations ("secret to creativity is knowing
> how to hide your sources") yourself.

OK, I did. But I didn't find the exact reference to the article, book,
interview, lecture, or off-hand comment of Einstein's the quote was
supposed to have come from. For all I know, the statement was a
sarcastic quip meant to deride someone Einstein thought was
unscrupulous. I can't know the truth of it until I can get hold of the
actual source and know the context of the quote, assuming, that is,
that the quote is truly from Einstein.

I'm not the only one to notice the lack of documentation for this
alleged quote of Einstein's. In

http://physicsweb.org/articles/review/16/4/2/1

we find a review by Einstein expert John Stachel of the book _Albert
Einstein: The Incorrigible Plagiarist_, authored by Christopher Jon
Bjerknes:

"This book is primarily an industrious compilation of citations taken
from various points of the intellectual compass. Well over half of the
book consists of quotations in English and in various original
languages, with source notes - all duly accurate as far as I checked.
The one glaring exception is of a supposed quotation from Einstein that
appears on the front cover of the book - "The secret to creativity is
knowing how to hide your sources" - for which no source is given..."

In any case, Einstein did NOT hide his sources. In fact the opposite is
the case. He loved to compliment those many physicists who lived before
him, or published before him for his contemporaries: Galileo, Newton,
Faraday, Maxwell, Hertz, Mach, Lorentz, Poisson, Poincare, Minkowski,
Planck, Heisenberg, to name some of them. See Einstein's science essays
in Ideas and Opinions (or in other collections of his essays) for
references. He adored Lorentz! and regarded him as a physicist who made
definite contributions to theoretical physics, on which he himself
built. (See H.A. Lorentz, Creator and Personality, Ideas and Opinions,
pp 73-76.)

It seems about as ludicrous for Einstein to admit to being a plagiarist
as for a crook to annouce to world that the police are looking at the
wrong suspects because he committed the theft.

All I can say so far, is that the apparent success the quoters of this
alleged quote from Einstein owe to their own successful use of it is
that they have hidden its "source" from public view.

If you know the actual source of it, please provide it in your reply.
Thank you.

.

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