How Einstein Ruined Physics

[Kitsunegari]

Seems like a very interesting book to say the least I've heard of the Poincare connection before and some other controversies about Einstein.
http://www.amazon.com/How-Einstein-R.../dp/B004ZSC3QM

Einstein is considered the world’s greatest genius for creating the theory of relativity. How Einstein Ruined Physics explains relativity, how it was discovered, and how it fits into a long history of trying to understand motion and symmetry. The book shows that Einstein’s role is badly misunderstood.

Modern physics books often describe a fantasy world that has less and less to do with reality. They tell of alternate universes, cosmic singularities, and extra dimensions. When they lack evidence for these ideas, they argue that they are following Einstein's example and looking for the next revolution.

Einstein's example is detailed. He is famous for uniting space and time in the theory of relativity, and for revolutionizing science with pure thought. In fact, his famous relativity paper merely postulated what had previously been proved, and he did not even understand why space and time were being united. The essentials of relativity are explained, along with how they were discovered.

The crucial ideas behind relativity are motion and symmetry, and these are the most basic ideas on all of science. Relativity was the culmination of an ancient quest to understand the motion of the Earth. The story takes us from ancient Greeks like Aristotle, through medieval debates over Copernicus and Galileo, and up to the modern search for dark matter and energy.

Somehow it has become fashionable in physics to try for some sort of abstract Einsteinian revolution instead of explaining observable realities. This book dispels the myths about physics progressing by pure thought, and shows that following Einstein's dream is an entirely bad idea. Published by Dark Buzz.

Einstein was the greatest public idol of the twentieth century. He became famous among the general public for being a great and humble genius, among intellectuals for discovering relativity, among philosophers for redefining the scientific revolution, and among physicists for his pursuit of a unified field theory. These are all great mistakes, and they have driven physics research into the study of alternative universes and other ideas that have no scientific foundation.
This book carefully dissects these myths. It explains the development of relativity in the context of an ancient struggle to understand motion and symmetry. It shows that Einstein's role has been exaggerated, and has been used to undermine science. Physics is no longer the science that all other sciences emulate.

[Timefool]

So the controversy over Einstein arises over fact that what he proposed cannot be applied to everyday life or cannot be proven true? I thought that was sciences purpose. If it is, Einstein affected science more than most people can imagine then.

[Sphere]

I guess I can agree that there is a public misconception that Einstein somehow sat in his little patent office and just through shear brilliance came up with first special then general relativity.

As stated in the OP, the underlying notions of special relativity (length and time dilation) had already been proposed. Einstien was aware of the experiments and these proposals, he just compiled them and took them to their fullest conclusion. General relativity was more original, but again, Einstien was not working in a vacuum, he was reading papers and talking with colleagues. He wasn't some hermit.

That being said, the idea that Einstein somehow ruined science is laughably absurd. He helped usher in not only relativistic physics, but also the new field of quantum physics, and anyone claiming that it hasn't proven useful is just plain ignorant.

And now mandatory Feynman ...

[Town Watch]

Einstein was certainly a useful guy, but I guess the crux of the problem, is that even though Einstein thought it was a good idea to work towards the theory of everything, maybe it wasn't such a good idea after all. It would not however be HIS fault per se, that we took the bait.

I mean when talking about Einstein's dream, we're talking about the so-called theory of everything, right? Just because Einstein thought it was a good idea to do this, and work towards that, doesn't mean that it's correct, necessarily. He certainly didn't finish that area of his work.

or alternatively we (who live in the post-Einstein era) just too stupid to complete the puzzle.

That being said, Sphere is obviously correct that Einstein and his work had a more far reaching effects as well.

[Jack04]

Arguably Einstein's greatest achievement (he never won the Nobel prize for his work on relativity) was actually quantum theory, but anyway.

Physics hasn't progressed by "pure thought" since the Renaissance, where thought experiments were largely all that could be considered. If anything, the era of physics which has followed Einstein has been one of meticulous observation, used to demonstrate (or, indeed, disprove) the work of theorists, even amongst whom, "pure thought" is a rare ingredient.

Take, for example, the multi-dimensional concept (from a very specific angle). We theorise the existence of a Higgs particle. This is not a pure, abstract thought, it is simply the extension of a very well established area of physics, namely quantum field theory. The trouble here lies in the fact that according to QFT (and a few other composite mathematical constructs) the particle corresponding to the Higgs field, must have two masses (one at ~the EW unification energy, one at the energy corresponding to the Plank mass, which is huge). These masses and theories are extrapolated from known observed values, nothing is arising from "pure thought". One possible solution is that the Plank mass is actually anomalously high for good reason, namely that gravity is propagating "more" space than the other forces (i.e. more dimensions).

This can be tested by the measurement of the gravitational dependence with distance at small radii. If the universe is 3D at that level, the gravitational force will have a 1/r² dependence, if more, the dependence on radius will change.

Anyway, none of these concepts arise from pure thought. They arise from extrapolations from observed values and their corresponding theories.

In case anyone is interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchy_problem

Even if you consider the concept of theorised physics a problem, it is arguably Newton, not Einstein who should take the blame. He largely set out the mathematical nature of modern physics with his work on gravity.

[DaVinci]

I guess I can agree that there is a public misconception that Einstein somehow sat in his little patent office and just through shear brilliance came up with first special then general relativity.

As stated in the OP, the underlying notions of special relativity (length and time dilation) had already been proposed. Einstien was aware of the experiments and these proposals, he just compiled them and took them to their fullest conclusion. General relativity was more original, but again, Einstien was not working in a vacuum, he was reading papers and talking with colleagues. He wasn't some hermit.

That being said, the idea that Einstein somehow ruined science is laughably absurd. He helped usher in not only relativistic physics, but also the new field of quantum physics, and anyone claiming that it hasn't proven useful is just plain ignorant.

...

Totally agree, except he is calling Einstein, not Einstien
And it's just as science works, can't understand the apparent argumentation as written in the OP.

[visser300]

Totally agree, except he is calling Einstein, not Einstien
And it's just as science works, can't understand the apparent argumentation as written in the OP.

C'mon, he is using these bold statements to sell as many books as he can. You guys are a bit too much worried

[DaVinci]

C'mon, he is using these bold statements to sell as many books as he can. You guys are a bit too much worried

My post is sounding worried?

One can be worried for the science world, if apparently the anti-science front strenghens "daily" its power (ie. as known for the US), and seemingly has quite some support in TWC ... but not really as for this single thread here, lol.

[Sphere]

Totally agree, except he is calling Einstein, not Einstien
And it's just as science works, can't understand the apparent argumentation as written in the OP.

I spelled it right 2/3 times, that is good enough for quantum physics.

[Denny Crane!]

Even if he didn't discover anything or propose anything new (which of course there are things as mentioned) sometimes pulling strands together in itself is an achievement.

[Kitsunegari]

Schlafly accuses Einstein of not giving proper credit to fellow scientists:

We now know from publication of Einstein’s letters that he failed to credit his first wife for help with special relativity, and refused to credit many others. His first wife [Marie Maric] was a physicist who collaborated with him on relativity. Later papers also frequently failed to credit his sources, and yet he wrote complaint letters when he did not get what he wanted. He used the news media to promote himself more than any other scientist of the day. For the rest of his life he continued to ignore his sources and the contributions of others.

[Kitsunegari]

Not to thread necro, but after finally reading some of the, it does seem that Einstein got away with more than a little outright plagiarism, I feel for Poincare and Einstein's first wife who deserve much more of the credit. Schafly chalks it up to the mythologizing of how old ideas are replaced:

It is all a myth. Einstein did not invent relativity or most of the other things for which he is credited. He is mainly famous for popularizing the discoveries of others. We have all been duped.
The mathematics of relativity may be found in college textbooks, and it is not detailed here. But at the core of relativity are some basic ideas about motion and symmetry that can be traced back many centuries. One of those is the motion of the Earth. The ancient Greeks had good arguments for and against the idea that the Earth moves around the Sun. These issues were not resolved by Copernicus or Galileo. Until the invention of relativity, there were still experiments that seemed to imply that the Earth was motionless.
The Einstein myth is part of a larger set of myths about the nature of science, and about how new ideas replace old ideas. The first is the flat Earth myth. Millions of people have been taught that ancient and medieval scholars were too stupid to figure out that the Earth was round, and that the truth was suppressed by religious and other narrow-minded authorities until Christopher Columbus proved them wrong. In fact the ancient Greeks deduced that the Earth was round and there has been no serious dispute about it ever since.
The next myth concerns detecting the motion of the Earth. It is the most fundamental question in all of physics. Does the Earth move? How can such motion be demonstrated? Again, millions of people have been taught false and nonsensical stories about how ancient astronomers were unscientific or about attempts to suppress the truth. According to the theory of relativity, motion is relative, and uniform motion is undetectable except in comparison to something else.
The philosophical myth is that science advances by paradigm shifts, with the best examples being the Copernican revolution and Einstein’s relativity. But the whole concept is a gross distortion of history, and a baseless attack on the value of science.

p 4

[Jack04]

Eh? Einstein never claimed to have invented relativity. What he did was to create the special and general theories of relativity. Nor did he create quantum mechanics (no-one suggests that he does).This book seems to be trying to create hysteria out of nothing.

[Kitsunegari]

Eh? Einstein never claimed to have invented relativity. What he did was to create the special and general theories of relativity. Nor did he create quantum mechanics (no-one suggests that he does).This book seems to be trying to create hysteria out of nothing.

Ahem, it might help to read the previous posts:

We now know from publication of Einstein’s letters that he failed to credit his first wife for help with special relativity, and refused to credit many others. His first wife [Marie Maric] was a physicist who collaborated with him on relativity. Later papers also frequently failed to credit his sources, and yet he wrote complaint letters when he did not get what he wanted. He used the news media to promote himself more than any other scientist of the day. For the rest of his life he continued to ignore his sources and the contributions of others.

He was extremely self-promoting and his behavior was tantamount to claiming sole credit. There's speculation that since Einstein gave his Nobel Prize money to Marie Maric in order to "hush" her from raising the issue of failing to credit her (and others).

[Armatus]

catchy title for a book.

[conon394]

I dunno its easy to say person X just took from the 'Giants' on whose shoulders they stood, but that is an easy game: Take Adam Smith and his needle factory - not original stolen from Xenophon, but that is not what you will learn in secondary school economics. Or how about this why does everyone know Watson and Crick, but not Rosalind Franklin or only maybe Mendal and certainly not RA Fisher a man whose impact on Genetics and Statistics is absolutely profound - but of course only in the context of everyone else who worked before and with him including all the nameless women who did the endless calculations for low pay required to prove the statistical and genetic ideals he developed in an era before computers...

The thing is sometimes a person gets noticed and anointed by History, but Einstein does not seem to have sought out that glory. A jerk like Wastson certainy likely does not deserve the fame he has and somebody Fisher (that not to say he was not an ass as well) is lost to history of the average Joe no matter how many fields he influenced - that just how the cookie crumbles

[Visna]

It's very, very rarely a case of radical new ideas and discoveries sending everything previously guessed to the junkyard. What often happens is that every now and then someone comes along and compiles existing ideas and throw in some of their own, or even just a case of assigning more or less importance to already known ideas or describing them more accurately. Relativity was already a known concept at Einstein's time, evolution and even common descent was hardly controversial at Darwin's time etc. And yet those two, at least in popular culture so to speak, get all the credit, when they, like pretty much all other scientists, already stood on the shoulders of (other) giants. I've no problem with calling that unfair, but that's just the way history goes.

[Aanker]

I think the OP is exaggerating the talk of "multiple universes" and other random theories that are reserved to 500-word articles on Wikipedia. Physics are still very entrenched in reality; the development of fusion power, the use of the LHC and other instruments demonstrate this.

[Jack04]

Extra-dimensions are a fairly well respected consideration of modern physics. Check out the hierarchy problem (and potential solutions) for example.

[Aanker]

I meant multiple universes, sorry.