Re: Albert Einstein as a Philosopher of Science

Schoenfeld wrote: 
Sam Wormley wrote:


Schoenfeld wrote:

Sam Wormley wrote:



Schoenfeld wrote:


Sam Wormley wrote:




Albert Einstein as a Philosopher of Science
http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-58/iss-12/p34.html

Einstein's philosophical habit of mind, cultivated by
undergraduate training and lifelong dialogue, had a profound
effect on the way he did physics.

See: http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-58/iss-12/p34.html 


I suppose it's easy to criticize in retrospect, but Einstein was a
smart fellow who carried many prejudices with him about how nature
should work. Prejudices which, in my opinion, made him fall short of
the super-hero status the (funding seeking) physics community make him
out to be.

Had he left the field equations of gravitation the way they he derived
them he could've predicted the expansion of the universe decades before
it was observed. Instead he inserted a cosmological constant because he
wanted the universe to be static.

Had he tried to find actual solutions to his differential field
equations he could've predicted strange astronomical bodies. The simple
geometry of a circle would've predicted the existence of blackholes,
and other important (inferred) properties of nature.

Had Einstein not been prejudiced by notions of determinism (which he
himself helped destroy) he could've played a major role in the
development of quantum theory and not have been relegated as an old
fuddy duddy in his later years of isolation..


 Funny... how Einstein made so many of those contributions you think he
 didn't!



You must be confused. I never said Einstein made those contributions, I
said he could've.


  You must be confused. Einstein made so many of those contributions you
  think he didn't!




#1: The expansion of the universe was first proposed by Hubble (that's
Edwin Hubble, not the telescope).


  Einstein's GTR predicts a dynamic universe (with or without a
  cosmological constant).


#2: Blackholes were predicted by Karl Schwarzchild a year after
Einstein published his field equations. Einstein was surprised by
Schwarzchild's quick result as he believed his PDE's were too
complicated to solve meaningfully.


  Einstein's GTR predicts black holes.



#3: Einstein did not play a major role in the development of quantum
theory. QT is a lot more than particles of light (which was proposed by
Newton centuries before).



  Einstein played a very major role in the development of quantum
  mechanics starting with his 1905 paper on the photoelectric effect
  and culminating with his EPR paper and follow-ons.


The point you missed was that Einstein *could've* achieved these
things. He still did achieve major breakthroughs, that's not what I'm
debating - I'm saying is that he was just off from being the super-hero
they paint him out to be.


  I didn't miss the point at all... yeah, he could have done more, but
  he chose to spend his time trying to unify electromagnetism and gravity.
  Yet he achieved so much in several fields.

  Most physicists would be happy to make one discovery that is important
  enough to be taught to future generations of physics students. Only a
  very small number manage this in their lifetime, and even fewer make
  two appearances in the textbooks.

  But Einstein was different. In little more than eight months in 1905
  he completed five papers that would change the world for ever.
  Spanning three quite distinct topics - relativity, the photoelectric
  effect and Brownian motion - Einstein overturned our view of space and
  time, showed that it is insufficient to describe light purely as a
  wave, and laid the foundations for the discovery of atoms.



.

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