Re: Would Einstein recognize his own theory today?
- From: Rock Brentwood <markwh04@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2008 18:31:08 +0100 (CET)
azeyn...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
I commented that "if Einstein came back to Earth he would not
recognize his theory and he would be told to study MTW if he wanted to
learn General Relativity."
The assumption is that Einstein comes in disguise, not as a celebrity,
in that case, no one would care to tell him to study GR.
You have to understand something that is almost completely unknown
about the history of Einstein -- something I, myself, didn't learn up
until a month ago. 1905 didn't just happen by itself. It was not
"silence, 1905, 5 landmark papers, boom." That's all myth and
nonsense.
What it actually was is this (and there's a moral lesson in this): it
was "a few essays on aether theory c. 1900, a few papers in Annalen
der Physik 1900-1905, then ... TWENTY ONE REVIEWS of others people's
works in 1905, littered with a few papers of his own."
Then, like, 2 more reviews after 1905, then it was all "nobody but me"
afterwards. If you have to ask why it tapered off, after he crested
with SR and the magnum opus, GR, well there's your answer.
And let that lesson be taken to heart by any who may be taking
themselves out of the loop, so to say, to spend 5 or 10 years writing
their "magnum opus" or get self-involved in their own school of
thought or creations or advocacies.
So, as you can see: "would he recognize what's present today?" is
clearly the wrong question -- were the same process to be repeated.
The only relevant question would be: "is there a venue to grab a bunch
of papers and books, facilities to study, critically review and
analyse them, and distribute commentary, rewrites and analyses of
them?"
Penrose, himself, made the point at the end of his 2006 "Road to
Reality" book, that the times called for someone to fill this role
once again -- the Integrator.
Let's make the question more interesting: suppose he actually DID come
back -- in reincarnated form. Where would he be, and would he
recognize the published literature today?
He'd probably take up residence in the US, picking a spot that had a
history of a socialist government (surprisingly: one that was a well-
run, award-winning municipal government, with a legacy of open spaces,
large spanning parks and beach-fronts clearly show for it), a
university with a strong Jewish heritage, and a city whose very
conception (and city hall) are a replica of Munich (and the
Ratskellar). Of course, we're talking about Milwaukee, UW-Milwaukee
(whose Library, the Golda Meir Library was named in honor of one of
its former residents).
Indeed, had UWM been around before its year of consolidation in 1956,
I'm convinced he would have taken up residence in Milwaukee, when
moving to the US; not the least because it feels most like being in
Munich. It was, at the time, socialist, clean, well-run and on a major
upswing in terms of population and prestige.
But anyway... in his new life, he'd take up violin in early childhood
[1], probably forego a drivers' license [2], visit southern Germany
and Hungary (where his former wife came from) [3], be conversant in
German, English, French and Hungarian [4], and be a strong advocate of
world federalism [5].
(And he'd have dark hair and a moustache [6], which is easily prone to
get bushy; and a somewhat dark complexion).
And he'd slowly and gradually get back into everything by critically
reviewing everything that's out there [7]. All the literature from all
points of view, being nothing more than the analogue of the history of
Japanese automaking in the 1950's -> 1990's (Big 3 "copycats and
cloners" in the 1950's, evolving into major market authorities by the
1980's and on).
When it comes to the actual mathematical formalism: it was Einstein
who was the first or one of the first to use the van der Waerden 2-
component spinor notation to formulate the general wave equation. He
worked within the "new" geometry that proceeded from Cartan and others
that has, in the intervening years, led to a kind of Tower of Babel
split in the language between physicists and mathematicians.
He started dealing with the prospect of reformulating gravitational
theory as a purely algebraic theory at the end of his life. He was
familiar with the probabilistic interpretation of Quantum Theory
because he was, in fact, one of the first to raise the idea -- back
before 1910. The Dark Matter problem was essentially one of the topics
of the one of the appendix sections in the last edition of the Meaning
of Relativity.
I like to think that when he wrote the last appendix of the last
edition of the Meaning of Relativity, he keeled over and (dissatisfied
with the loose ends) ended up coming back. So, with that having been
said...
Notes (Halloween special: "The spooky parallels"):
[1] All the cool instruments were on Saturdays during grade school,
when my flag football league games at the YMCA were scheduled. All
that was available was violin lessons on Wednesday.
[2] Wisconsin didn't allow people to get licenses who did not declare
their heritage or ancestry. I walk everywhere I go.
[3] Budapest in 1985. Munich last Spring.
[4] German immersion at 7. Formal study in Hungarian, French, German,
Portuguese (informal in Spanish and Russian)
[5] http://federation.g3z.com/FedSeries/index.htm#Progeny
[6] I shaved off my moustache and hair in the early 1990's because it
was getting just a LITTLE BIT too close for comfort ... especially
when the moustache started greying.
[7] About 100 items under http://federation.g3z.com/Physics/index.htm
.
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