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I have the same feeling, and I think people often mix his personal achievement (fighting a degenerative disease for so long and being a very large mind in the w

by cyphar 8y ago

I have the same feeling, and I think people often mix his personal achievement (fighting a degenerative disease for so long and being a very large mind in the world of cosmology) with his scientific achievements (helping refine cosmology and think about black holes and their interactions). I've read several of his books and papers, and while they are definitely very brilliant, he never produced a Principa Mathematica (even Einstein didn't). In many ways I would argue that Einstein would be a more apt comparison. Einstein based most of his fundamental musings by identifying issues you see when combining different fields and then using thought-experiments to think about these issues. Hawking similarly operated through though-experiments and trying to piece together different concepts from different fields (though he focused far more on cosmology). Einstein was a brilliant scientist (obviously), but people often over-complicate his work. In many ways, the real beauty of Einstein's work was just how simple and fundamental it was -- and how un-intuitive the final conclusions are. Newton is a whole different ballgame (even though he was wrong about absolute space and time -- but that conclusion took Maxwell's equations to discover).

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Maro 8y ago
Are you a physicist? Not trying to be snarky. I think GR is at Newton's level. They say most of Physics is very iterative, and if X didn't discover Z, the probably another person Y would have 5-10 yrs later. But this is not true for GR. GR came out of the blue, it wasn't strictly required to explain anything important back then. It was just Einstein sitting down, doing thought experiments about elevators in space, then a huge, incomprehensible (to me) mental leap to manifolds and tensors, and the Einstein equation. You can try this yourself: read his popular GR book (it's excellent), then pick up a GR textbook and read the first chapter, and see if you could get from the thought experiments to constructing the math. It's hard to compare it to Newton, bc Newton also had to invent Calculus, but it's up there.
- cyphar 8y ago
  > Are you a physicist? Not trying to be snarky. Yes, I've studied and done physics research (I have yet to finish my degree, but I've completed all of the physics topics). (My research topics were on astroseismology and non-linear optics -- not related to SR or GR, but we went through the derivations and reasoning of SR in class.) > I think GR is at Newton's level. I think you've misunderstood what I meant by "people over-complicate Einstein's work". My point wasn't that Einstein is somehow inferior to Newton, it was that a large part of Einstein's work is actually incredibly simple (compared to how it is pitched) which to me makes it all the more genius. > GR came out of the blue, it wasn't strictly required to explain anything important back then. The core idea behind GR came from thought experiments trying to understand how SR might be extended to non-inertial frames. In many ways this is the most obvious thing to consider after you've come up with SR: "what if we start accelerating?" Also, SR similarly wasn't required to explain anything important. Einstein was thinking very deeply about what does it mean to "measure" something, and the first section of his paper was discussions of synchronized clocks and how they relate to measurements (possibly the furthest thing from a "real" problem you can have). > then a huge, incomprehensible (to me) mental leap to manifolds and tensors, and the Einstein equation. In Einstein's case, he had quite a bit of help with the mathematics (again, not to detract at all -- but we should separate the mathematical derivation from intuition). Intuition is the driving force in physics (with mathematics fleshing out what the logical conclusion of an intuition must be), and so I find discussing the intuition to be far more critical when talking about physical theories. The core genius was the realisation that acceleration changes how light beams look to observers -- and the intuition that acceleration must have an equivalence to gravity. Neither of these things are complicated, and you could explain them to anyone who has seen a projectile or stood in an elevator. But the conclusion you come to is far from obvious. And that, to me, is the beauty of physics. Obviously the intuition is just the first step, and there is plenty of brilliance in all of the manifold and tensor equations (it's definitely above my pay-grade), but I think that over-hyping the mathematics isn't quite right either. > It's hard to compare it to Newton, bc Newton also had to invent Calculus, but it's up there. That is effectively what I was saying. Newton had Principa Mathematica and in many ways pioneered the mathematical viewpoint that we use in physics today.
  - 8y ago

by cyphar 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

Maro 8y ago

Are you a physicist? Not trying to be snarky. I think GR is at Newton's level. They say most of Physics is very iterative, and if X didn't discover Z, the probably another person Y would have 5-10 yrs later. But this is not true for GR. GR came out of the blue, it wasn't strictly required to explain anything important back then. It was just Einstein sitting down, doing thought experiments about elevators in space, then a huge, incomprehensible (to me) mental leap to manifolds and tensors, and the Einstein equation. You can try this yourself: read his popular GR book (it's excellent), then pick up a GR textbook and read the first chapter, and see if you could get from the thought experiments to constructing the math. It's hard to compare it to Newton, bc Newton also had to invent Calculus, but it's up there.

cyphar 8y ago
> Are you a physicist? Not trying to be snarky. Yes, I've studied and done physics research (I have yet to finish my degree, but I've completed all of the physics topics). (My research topics were on astroseismology and non-linear optics -- not related to SR or GR, but we went through the derivations and reasoning of SR in class.) > I think GR is at Newton's level. I think you've misunderstood what I meant by "people over-complicate Einstein's work". My point wasn't that Einstein is somehow inferior to Newton, it was that a large part of Einstein's work is actually incredibly simple (compared to how it is pitched) which to me makes it all the more genius. > GR came out of the blue, it wasn't strictly required to explain anything important back then. The core idea behind GR came from thought experiments trying to understand how SR might be extended to non-inertial frames. In many ways this is the most obvious thing to consider after you've come up with SR: "what if we start accelerating?" Also, SR similarly wasn't required to explain anything important. Einstein was thinking very deeply about what does it mean to "measure" something, and the first section of his paper was discussions of synchronized clocks and how they relate to measurements (possibly the furthest thing from a "real" problem you can have). > then a huge, incomprehensible (to me) mental leap to manifolds and tensors, and the Einstein equation. In Einstein's case, he had quite a bit of help with the mathematics (again, not to detract at all -- but we should separate the mathematical derivation from intuition). Intuition is the driving force in physics (with mathematics fleshing out what the logical conclusion of an intuition must be), and so I find discussing the intuition to be far more critical when talking about physical theories. The core genius was the realisation that acceleration changes how light beams look to observers -- and the intuition that acceleration must have an equivalence to gravity. Neither of these things are complicated, and you could explain them to anyone who has seen a projectile or stood in an elevator. But the conclusion you come to is far from obvious. And that, to me, is the beauty of physics. Obviously the intuition is just the first step, and there is plenty of brilliance in all of the manifold and tensor equations (it's definitely above my pay-grade), but I think that over-hyping the mathematics isn't quite right either. > It's hard to compare it to Newton, bc Newton also had to invent Calculus, but it's up there. That is effectively what I was saying. Newton had Principa Mathematica and in many ways pioneered the mathematical viewpoint that we use in physics today.
- 8y ago