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Einstein was influenced by more than only philosophy, of course. A 1846 SciFi story ("Die Gestirne und die Weltgeschichte") about someone travelling faster than
by hanslub42 6y ago
Einstein was influenced by more than only philosophy, of course. A 1846 SciFi story ("Die Gestirne und die Weltgeschichte") about someone travelling faster than light (and thus being able to observe the past) fascinated him (he eventually would write the introduction for a reprint).
On the other hand, established philosophy was very sceptical of his ideas, which collided spectacularly with Henri Bergson's ideas about time, now forgotten, but very fashionable then. This made relativity controversial for a long time (even after Eddington's 1919 observation of gravitational lensing during an eclipse) and probably was the reason that he never got a Nobel prize for it, but only for his much less groundbreaking work on photoelectricity.
- olooney 6y agoAll true; Bergson's critique is believed to have directly influenced the Nobel prize committee. In hindsight an absolute travesty. However, I would not say that Einstein's explanation of the photoelectric effect was not Nobel prize worthy in itself, or even less groundbreaking, as it laid the foundations for quantum theory. Also, remember that at the time when Einstein's Nobel prize was awarded the general theory of relativity was very new and had only been partially confirmed by experiment (by light bending near the sun and the precession of mercury) so the Nobel prize would have have had to been awarded of the special theory alone.