Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: ROLF of the HILL COUNTRY

With all due respect, your post contained more errors about Einstein, relativity and physics in general than I would have thought possible in such a short space.

A few corrections:

-Einstein was, first and foremost, a physicist who had a uniquely intuitive understanding of the concepts his theories explained. He was merely an adequate mathematician.

-Einstein’s work has not set physics back.

-Einstein’s work was only tangentially related to nuclear energy. It was primarily related to explaining how real objects actually behave.

-Much of his work greatly advanced our understanding of how the universe works.

-He came up with two separate and independent theories of relativity. Special and General.

-Relativity is not one of the universal forces and his relativity theories did not cause a lapse in work on electromagnetic force theories. Electromagnetism and Relativity are not in competition.

-No scientists claim any theory is valid without extensive and compelling physical evidence. With only math to back it up there is no theory and all good scientists agree with this.

-There are no “modern mathematical models of aerodynamics” that “prove” a bumblebee “cannot fly”.

Those things you cited are all something like urban legends of science and keep getting repeated by non-scientists. They are nonsense.


12 posted on 03/12/2010 4:59:00 PM PST by spinestein (The answer is 42.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies ]


To: spinestein
-Einstein was, first and foremost, a physicist who had a uniquely intuitive understanding of the concepts his theories explained. He was merely an adequate mathematician.

I agree with this in general, but his "inituitive understanding" was not physical intuition, such as Faraday had of the electric field, but a very deeply considered philosophical perspective. His paper, "On the electrodynamics of moving bodies" was based on the philosophical conviction that Maxwell's equations should be the same for all inertial reference frames.

His ideas for General Relativity grew from his belief in the Principle of Equivalence, and a careful consideration of its implications. He looked around for the math to implement his ideas, realized that Riemannian Geometry was it, and put himself to school in it. I think he was a little better than "adequate" at it, though!

-He came up with two separate and independent theories of relativity. Special and General.

GR is based on SR at its foundation. SR applies in locally inertial frames which are patched together using Riemannian methods into a globally curved space-time continuum.

14 posted on 03/12/2010 7:32:14 PM PST by dr_lew
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 12 | View Replies ]

To: spinestein; devere; camerakid400
Do a search for “Electric Universe”

The Bumblebee story is NOT an urban-legend.

Einstein was a mathematician that later got into physics.

24 posted on 03/13/2010 3:07:54 PM PST by ROLF of the HILL COUNTRY (It's the spending, Stupid!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 12 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson