3 ms·

The popular retelling of how Einstein created Special Relativity to "Resolve the contradictions of Michelson-Morly experiments" is very reductive to the history

The popular retelling of how Einstein created Special Relativity to "Resolve the contradictions of Michelson-Morly experiments" is very reductive to the history of the question. The epitome is the quote from the paper: > From the two postulates, Einstein derived the Lorentz trans- formation ... If Einstein derived them, who is "Lorentz"? The groundwork for Special Relativity was the study of electrodynamics and symmetries of Maxwell equations. The Einsteins paper was literally called "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" and never cites Michelson and Morley.

eru 2mo ago
I agree with you in general. However: > If Einstein derived them, who is "Lorentz"? You can (re-) derive a lot of existing stuff.
- kergonath 2mo ago
  > You can (re-) derive a lot of existing stuff. Einstein was aware of Lorentz and the transform. He was aware of Poincaré as well. He knew the state of the art for his time.
  - eru 2mo ago
    Re-deriving the start of the art cleanly with fewer postulates is good!
    - oliculipolicula 2mo ago
      And so I'm skeptical of TFA's claim that "creativity _isn't [just]_ compression" Imho there's also a clean argument against the existence of LLM-understanding: chatbots have been unable to summarize to experts (see my reply to you in the other thread) their own findings. Even after prolonged interrogation. They were unable to _compress_ their own findings. Thus they might not actually understand what they have actually done. (They might barely pass an oral thesis defense) (One may object-- that proofs aren't data that can be "compressed". But then doesn't the process of abduction generalise the very idea of data? to.. ?)
      - eru 2mo ago
        I'm not sure, many chat bots summarise just fine as far as I can tell, on subjects I know a lot about.
        oliculipolicula 2mo ago
        I observe this too. It's just on the breakthroughs chatbots independently achieved , ie stuff not in the training data..? Note that there are some differences between the different breakthroughs. The ones that humans were close to solving already were better explained imho
teleforce 2mo ago
Einstein seems to be so conveniently dismissive that he knew about the seminal Michelson-Morley experiments but he probably knew about it too well [1]. Einstein is not the first great scientist who are in denial of other important prior contributions, and he also not the last one. Newton also probably knew too well about Al-Haytham (Alhazen), arguably the father of modern science, and his breakthrough experiments but never directly cited Alhazen's works in his seminal books on Optics. [1] Millikan, Einstein, and the Birth of Relativity (4 letters): https://www.aps.org/archives/publications/apsnews/200403/letters.cfm https://www.aps.org/archives/publications/apsnews/200403/let... "Abraham Pais, who knew Einstein well and wrote his scientific biography, was certain that Einstein did know about Michelson's experiment before 1905. He points out that Einstein was over seventy and in poor health when he spoke to Shankland; at the first interview he probably did not remember that Michelson's experiment is discussed in Lorentz's 1895 monograph, the famous "Versuch", which Einstein had definitely read before 1905."
- bryanrasmussen 2mo ago
  Was the ethical requirement to discuss and acknowledge predecessors work as developed in Newton's time as in our own? I would naturally expect not because it would seem to me to be the kind of thing that develops over time, but I could be wrong as I am not a historian of science.
  - teleforce 2mo ago
    It's a not a requirement, it's just a natural to do as a research scientist and a student of knowledge to acknowledge prior contributions if you knew it. The same is true when you are at the time of Aristotle.
    - randallsquared 2mo ago
      "Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!"
    - bryanrasmussen 2mo ago
jimbo808 2mo ago
I get really tired of Einstein being portrayed as if he’s the greatest scientist who ever lived, when he doesn’t even belong in that conversation. If Einstein never existed, the fields he was in were already moving strongly in the directions of his conclusions. If Maxwell or Newton had never existed, the world today would be quite different.
- Synaesthesia 2mo ago
  Einstein did a lot, he not only published the special and general theories of relativity, he also contributed to quantum physics and was the first to deduce the size of an atom using statistical arguments, essentially proving the existence of atoms.
  - adrian_b 2mo ago
    Not at all. The size of an atom was computed for the first time 40 years earlier, in 1865, by Johann Josef Loschmidt, who was an Austrian scientist. Loschmidt had determined the value of what today is called "Avogadro's number", despite the fact that Avogadro had no idea about how one could find the value at that number. The contribution of Avogadro had been the law that ideal gases have the same number of molecules per volume when the pressure and the temperature are the same, but he did not know how that number might be determined. Based on the results of Loschmidt, which were also used by Maxwell in his works on statistical physics, a few years later, in 1874, George Johnstone Stoney computed the value of the elementary electric charge, which he later named "electron". Loschmidt was the one who first measured and weighed the atoms, establishing their existence beyond any reasonable doubt. Before him, many believed that the hypothesis of Dalton about the existence of atoms is just a convenient theory for explaining the laws of chemistry, but some other better explanation might be discovered in the future. Einstein published an explanation of the Brownian motion, which verified that everything fits in the known theories and it matches the expected values. It did not contain any novel number or law, but it was a useful confirmation of the current theories. In my opinion, the greatest achievement of Einstein has been the paper published by him in which he revealed the existence of the stimulated emission of electromagnetic waves by hot bodies, besides their well known absorption and spontaneous emission. This paper had tremendous practical applications, leading to the discovery of masers and lasers, without which the modern technology would have never existed. While Einstein's theory of gravitation was more intellectually challenging, its practical applications are minor, almost negligible. Moreover, even after more than a century we do not know exactly how adequate it is for describing gravitation. What is certain is that Einstein's theory of gravitation cannot be anything else but an approximation, as it is based on averaging the distribution of matter in space, without taking into account the concentration of matter into elementary particles. Another contribution of Einstein that is more important than his most frequently cited works is his support for Satyendra Nath Bose, which lead to the recognition of the Bose-Einstein statistics, which together with the Fermi-Dirac statistics plays an essential role in quantum physics.
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
doginasuit 2mo ago
This isn't offered as a defense of Einstein since I couldn't speculate on what ideas he must have been consciously aware of, but several times in my life I've thought I had a novel idea only to find a very similar idea was in something I read and had just forgotten about. It's a very human phenomenon. Science rightfully recognizes the mind that doesn't just first describe the idea but provides a robust framework to test it and communicate it.

eru 2mo ago

I agree with you in general. However: > If Einstein derived them, who is "Lorentz"? You can (re-) derive a lot of existing stuff.

kergonath 2mo ago
> You can (re-) derive a lot of existing stuff. Einstein was aware of Lorentz and the transform. He was aware of Poincaré as well. He knew the state of the art for his time.
- eru 2mo ago
  Re-deriving the start of the art cleanly with fewer postulates is good!
  - oliculipolicula 2mo ago
    And so I'm skeptical of TFA's claim that "creativity _isn't [just]_ compression" Imho there's also a clean argument against the existence of LLM-understanding: chatbots have been unable to summarize to experts (see my reply to you in the other thread) their own findings. Even after prolonged interrogation. They were unable to _compress_ their own findings. Thus they might not actually understand what they have actually done. (They might barely pass an oral thesis defense) (One may object-- that proofs aren't data that can be "compressed". But then doesn't the process of abduction generalise the very idea of data? to.. ?)
    - eru 2mo ago
      I'm not sure, many chat bots summarise just fine as far as I can tell, on subjects I know a lot about.
      - oliculipolicula 2mo ago
        I observe this too. It's just on the breakthroughs chatbots independently achieved , ie stuff not in the training data..? Note that there are some differences between the different breakthroughs. The ones that humans were close to solving already were better explained imho

teleforce 2mo ago

Einstein seems to be so conveniently dismissive that he knew about the seminal Michelson-Morley experiments but he probably knew about it too well [1]. Einstein is not the first great scientist who are in denial of other important prior contributions, and he also not the last one. Newton also probably knew too well about Al-Haytham (Alhazen), arguably the father of modern science, and his breakthrough experiments but never directly cited Alhazen's works in his seminal books on Optics. [1] Millikan, Einstein, and the Birth of Relativity (4 letters): https://www.aps.org/archives/publications/apsnews/200403/letters.cfm https://www.aps.org/archives/publications/apsnews/200403/let... "Abraham Pais, who knew Einstein well and wrote his scientific biography, was certain that Einstein did know about Michelson's experiment before 1905. He points out that Einstein was over seventy and in poor health when he spoke to Shankland; at the first interview he probably did not remember that Michelson's experiment is discussed in Lorentz's 1895 monograph, the famous "Versuch", which Einstein had definitely read before 1905."

bryanrasmussen 2mo ago
Was the ethical requirement to discuss and acknowledge predecessors work as developed in Newton's time as in our own? I would naturally expect not because it would seem to me to be the kind of thing that develops over time, but I could be wrong as I am not a historian of science.
- teleforce 2mo ago
  It's a not a requirement, it's just a natural to do as a research scientist and a student of knowledge to acknowledge prior contributions if you knew it. The same is true when you are at the time of Aristotle.
  - randallsquared 2mo ago
    "Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!"
  - bryanrasmussen 2mo ago

jimbo808 2mo ago

I get really tired of Einstein being portrayed as if he’s the greatest scientist who ever lived, when he doesn’t even belong in that conversation. If Einstein never existed, the fields he was in were already moving strongly in the directions of his conclusions. If Maxwell or Newton had never existed, the world today would be quite different.

Synaesthesia 2mo ago
Einstein did a lot, he not only published the special and general theories of relativity, he also contributed to quantum physics and was the first to deduce the size of an atom using statistical arguments, essentially proving the existence of atoms.
- adrian_b 2mo ago
  Not at all. The size of an atom was computed for the first time 40 years earlier, in 1865, by Johann Josef Loschmidt, who was an Austrian scientist. Loschmidt had determined the value of what today is called "Avogadro's number", despite the fact that Avogadro had no idea about how one could find the value at that number. The contribution of Avogadro had been the law that ideal gases have the same number of molecules per volume when the pressure and the temperature are the same, but he did not know how that number might be determined. Based on the results of Loschmidt, which were also used by Maxwell in his works on statistical physics, a few years later, in 1874, George Johnstone Stoney computed the value of the elementary electric charge, which he later named "electron". Loschmidt was the one who first measured and weighed the atoms, establishing their existence beyond any reasonable doubt. Before him, many believed that the hypothesis of Dalton about the existence of atoms is just a convenient theory for explaining the laws of chemistry, but some other better explanation might be discovered in the future. Einstein published an explanation of the Brownian motion, which verified that everything fits in the known theories and it matches the expected values. It did not contain any novel number or law, but it was a useful confirmation of the current theories. In my opinion, the greatest achievement of Einstein has been the paper published by him in which he revealed the existence of the stimulated emission of electromagnetic waves by hot bodies, besides their well known absorption and spontaneous emission. This paper had tremendous practical applications, leading to the discovery of masers and lasers, without which the modern technology would have never existed. While Einstein's theory of gravitation was more intellectually challenging, its practical applications are minor, almost negligible. Moreover, even after more than a century we do not know exactly how adequate it is for describing gravitation. What is certain is that Einstein's theory of gravitation cannot be anything else but an approximation, as it is based on averaging the distribution of matter in space, without taking into account the concentration of matter into elementary particles. Another contribution of Einstein that is more important than his most frequently cited works is his support for Satyendra Nath Bose, which lead to the recognition of the Bose-Einstein statistics, which together with the Fermi-Dirac statistics plays an essential role in quantum physics.

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]

doginasuit 2mo ago

This isn't offered as a defense of Einstein since I couldn't speculate on what ideas he must have been consciously aware of, but several times in my life I've thought I had a novel idea only to find a very similar idea was in something I read and had just forgotten about. It's a very human phenomenon. Science rightfully recognizes the mind that doesn't just first describe the idea but provides a robust framework to test it and communicate it.