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This is very false. Einstein's reputation was built on explaining known phenomena such as the photoelectric effect and Brownian motion. Special relativity was h

This is very false. Einstein's reputation was built on explaining known phenomena such as the photoelectric effect and Brownian motion. Special relativity was heavily motivated by a pile of puzzling evidence and a bunch of existing mathematics.

ianai 8y ago
And he funded his studies, initially, as a hobby alongside a job. We’ve not progressed very far if ground breaking research almost requires a person to find a novel study path.
- btrettel 8y ago
  What do you mean by "novel study path" here? Funding yourself with money received from a job? On my first reading I took "novel study path" to mean new research techniques or something along those lines, which seems obvious and is not likely what you meant.
  - ianai 8y ago
    Either applies really.
raverbashing 8y ago
It's not false, w.r.t. general relativity And you still need a good amount of creativity to come up with special relativity and to a certain extent, with the photoelectric effect (though we could say that was the 'easy' one) But yes, the puzzling results and existing mathematics were part of it. But there is a reason we hear much more about Einstein than Lorenz or Michelson-Moreley
iainmerrick 8y ago
Special relativity was heavily motivated by a pile of puzzling evidence If you mean the Michelson–Morley experiment (apparent zero velocity of earth with respect to the ether), apparently Einstein himself claimed that wasn’t a motivation. I believe it was all about resolving the long-standing "action at a distance" question raised by Newtonian physics (Newton himself noted that this was philosophically disturbing but didn’t venture an answer). Intuition and philosophy, rather than experimental evidence and mathematics.
- dboreham 8y ago
  At the beginning of his paper he cites the relativistic nature of Maxwell's equations, and "unsuccessful attempts to discover any motion of the earth relatively to the 'light medium' ". https://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/einstein/specrel/www/ https://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/einstein/specrel/www/
nessus42 8y ago
> This is very false. But didn't Einstein write the following in his own book? “I believe in intuition and inspiration. … At times I feel certain I am right while not knowing the reason. When the eclipse of 1919 confirmed my intuition, I was not in the least surprised. In fact I would have been astonished that it turned out otherwise. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.”

ianai 8y ago

And he funded his studies, initially, as a hobby alongside a job. We’ve not progressed very far if ground breaking research almost requires a person to find a novel study path.

btrettel 8y ago
What do you mean by "novel study path" here? Funding yourself with money received from a job? On my first reading I took "novel study path" to mean new research techniques or something along those lines, which seems obvious and is not likely what you meant.
- ianai 8y ago
  Either applies really.

raverbashing 8y ago

It's not false, w.r.t. general relativity And you still need a good amount of creativity to come up with special relativity and to a certain extent, with the photoelectric effect (though we could say that was the 'easy' one) But yes, the puzzling results and existing mathematics were part of it. But there is a reason we hear much more about Einstein than Lorenz or Michelson-Moreley

iainmerrick 8y ago

Special relativity was heavily motivated by a pile of puzzling evidence If you mean the Michelson–Morley experiment (apparent zero velocity of earth with respect to the ether), apparently Einstein himself claimed that wasn’t a motivation. I believe it was all about resolving the long-standing "action at a distance" question raised by Newtonian physics (Newton himself noted that this was philosophically disturbing but didn’t venture an answer). Intuition and philosophy, rather than experimental evidence and mathematics.

dboreham 8y ago
At the beginning of his paper he cites the relativistic nature of Maxwell's equations, and "unsuccessful attempts to discover any motion of the earth relatively to the 'light medium' ". https://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/einstein/specrel/www/ https://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/einstein/specrel/www/

nessus42 8y ago

> This is very false. But didn't Einstein write the following in his own book? “I believe in intuition and inspiration. … At times I feel certain I am right while not knowing the reason. When the eclipse of 1919 confirmed my intuition, I was not in the least surprised. In fact I would have been astonished that it turned out otherwise. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.”