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Not Everyone Agreed with Einstein
- sixQuarks 3y agoNot only did not everyone agree with him, many people including Nikola Tesla thought he was a fraud.
- sho_hn 3y ago"The theory, wraps all these errors and fallacies and clothes them in magnificent mathematical garb which fascinates, dazzles and makes people blind to the underlying errors. The theory is like a beggar clothed in purple whom ignorant people take for a king. Its exponents are very brilliant men, but they are metaphysicists rather than scientists. Not a single one of the relativity propositions has been proved." (https://www.nytimes.com/1935/07/11/archives/tesla-79-promises-to-transmit-force-scientist-on-birthday-reveals.html https://www.nytimes.com/1935/07/11/archives/tesla-79-promise...) That certainly didn't age well.
- bee_rider 3y agoAn engineer from the previous generation seems like the last person to ask about a physicist. Being established and in a downstream field seems especially likely to induce an unjustified sense of confidence.
- slabity 3y agoWell Nikola Tesla thought a lot of physicists who created successful theories were frauds. He openly disagreed with Einstein, Marie Curie, Maxwell, Hertz... And probably a lot more that I don't even know about. I think the most interesting thing about him is that, despite all his work in taming electricity, he disagreed with the existence of electrons (or really any subatomic particles).
- Konohamaru 3y agoAtomism is a philosophically offensive position to those of Tesla's personality type. Catholic Encyclopedia has an entry against it (while barely admitting an instrumental interpretation of atoms for chemistry). It's almost as bad as evolution!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- User23 3y agoCharitably I’m going to ascribe this to ignorance and not dishonesty. You may not be aware but Catholic dogma has no problem whatsoever with evolution, an old Earth, heliocentrism, or any number of other more or less fashionable opinions. The Catholic encyclopedia is over a century old and it shows. Perhaps you failed to understand the article you attempted to read? Nevertheless, here[1] is the entry on atomism for those who are interested. The article immediately distinguishes between philosophy and science while you appear to be, for some reason, conflating them: Atomism [a privative and temnein to cut, i.e. indivisible] is the system of those who hold that all bodies are composed of minute, indivisible particles of matter called atoms. We must distinguish between 1) atomism as a philosophy and 2) atomism as a theory of science. [1] https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02053a.htm https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02053a.htm
- colechristensen 3y ago> The Catholic encyclopedia is over a century old Tesla also died 80 years ago. The Catholic encyclopedia was finished in 1912, tesla was 56 at the time.
- Konohamaru 3y agoIt was neither ignorance nor dishonesty, my friend. It was measuring Tesla according to the beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church at his time in history. And I mentioned "atomism as a theory of science" under the instrumentalism part of my comment. In Catholic Theology, philosophy always means "ontological interpretation". That section you quoted is saying that Catholics are allowed to believe in atomism as an instrumental model, but not as the ultimate interpretation of how the Universe works.
- lo_zamoyski 3y agoAnother example is Georges Lemaître[0] who "was the first to theorize that the recession of nearby galaxies can be explained by an expanding universe", as well as the Big Bang theory. These were not ideas Einstein favored, at least not at first. Why should we be surprised people disagreed? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre
- toss1 3y agoEven today, many disagree with Eratosthenes of Cyrene, who measured Earth's circumference within 2% accuracy back over 2200 years ago. Einstein is also credited with saying that "Two things are infinite: The universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."
- Ono-Sendai 3y agoWhile obviously a brilliant scientist, sometimes I think Einstein set physics on the wrong path for 100 or so years. The concept of the photon seems unnecessary and confusing to people, if not just plain wrong. Lorentz ether theory seems like a better theory (or interpretation of the empirical data at least) than special relativity. The last major contribution of Einstein is general relativity, which I suspect is incorrect too. (Obviously I can't offer a better theory though)
- AnimalMuppet 3y agoWhat empirical data does Lorentz ether theory seem to fit better than special relativity?
- Ono-Sendai 3y agoThey both fit the data equally well, with the debatable exception of the cosmic microwave background, which debatably provides an absolute rest frame, thereby violating the SR postulate that all rest frames have the same laws of physics.
- AnimalMuppet 3y agoBut doesn't the negative result of the Michaelson-Morley experiment disprove the ether theory? Relativity explains that and ether does not.
- Ono-Sendai 3y agoNo, it doesn't disprove it. The results can be explained by the measuring apparatus undergoing length contraction and/or time dilation.
- Teever 3y agoAll the time, every time the experiment is run in all the locations that it has been run in? Where would we have run the experiment to confirm/deny the association you're describing?
- latency-guy2 3y agoYes. And that's completely fine. By the way, we know Einstein's theory of relatively is not quite right, there has been enormous amount of work since the early 1900s, its all good. Einstein's work was foundational, but incomplete, lets keep going.
- bigbillheck 3y ago> By the way, we know Einstein's theory of relatively is not quite right Do we? It's incompatible with the standard model, but that's not the same as "not quite right".
- latency-guy2 3y agoWe can argue semantics all day, "not quite right" is equivalent to "incomplete" to me, which I hope we are in agreement with.
- pdonis 3y ago> "not quite right" is equivalent to "incomplete" Not necessarily. "Not quite right" implies that GR makes wrong predictions for experiments that have already been done--which is wrong. "Incomplete" just means that GR might not cover some experiments that have not yet been done.
- ramraj07 3y agoWhat exactly isn’t right about “theory of relativity”? Like the general theory?
- latency-guy2 3y agoSee below, don't take it as me saying theory of relativity is fundamentally wrong.
- User23 3y agoWell the big thing is it contradicts quantum mechanics, which has far better experimental support.
- revskill 3y agoThat's why i'm totally fine when everyone disagreed with me on almost everything.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- at_a_remove 3y agoWas Einstein Right? by Clifford Will (disclaimer: know the guy a little bit), while it could use an update, is a fantastic review of the various experiments which showed that the results were within predictions of special and general relativities. Many people don't want Einstein to have been right, and their motivations vary. Some really really really want FTL to be a thing. Some desire an absolute frame of reference. Some have philosophical issues with the concepts. A few seem to be under the impression that Michelson-Morley was done just the one time and that was the end of any attempts to falsify.
- lern_too_spel 3y agoThe article is about people disagreeing with Einstein on quantum mechanics, not relativity.
- wrycoder 3y agoThe end of the article discusses special relativity's philosophical stance, and is rather interesting.
- lern_too_spel 3y agoBut nobody in the article disagreed with him about it. They disagreed with his complaints about quantum mechanics by making a comparison to relativity.
- ramraj07 3y agoThe Walter Issacson biography quoted Kip Thorne as saying if Einstein didn’t come up with relativity, likely no one would have for 30-40 years after. Which is insane and totally sensible. This theory had nothing to do with any observation or conundrum we could measure back then or even today except the weird discrepancy in Mercurys orbit. Truly a great genius with unparalleled originality. Somehow beats newton for this reason imo. Great spoilers for the book Project Hail Mary below so stop reading if you’ve not finished it (and why havent you?): it was such a brilliant idea in that book to suggest that the space faring alien race never figured out relativity still and could still head out to a nearby star and only then discover there’s a massive discrepancy in their calculations. To use such an obscure observation that relativity is not obvious at all as a plot point needs a lot of kudos to the author.
- seanosaur 3y agoI have a ton of love for Andy Weir (Project Hail Mary, The Martian) for the exact reason you describe. Not only does he love the hard sci-fi bits but he clearly loves doing the homework so he gets it right.
- aleph_minus_one 3y ago> The Walter Issacson biography quoted Kip Thorne as saying if Einstein didn’t come up with relativity, likely no one would have for 30-40 years after. Even for general relativity, it is not clear whether this statement is true, see > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_relativity_priority_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_relativity_priority_di... According to this Wikipedia article, it seems that David Hilbert came up with a different way of deriving general relativity at about the same time as Albert Einstein.
- ramraj07 3y agoThe great insight IMO was special theory; the General Theory was I suppose a bit more obvious generalization that just needed the math to be figured out..
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- ramesh31 3y agoFortunate for us, reality did.
- lern_too_spel 3y agoIt did not. Not on the subject that the disagreement in the article was about (quantum mechanics).