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"The true art of questioning is to discover what the pupil does know or is capable of knowing."
Einstein's life and work
Comments
on the scientific method.
Albert Einstein's historical context:
- Just what did he do?
- How do we know he is right?
- Why should we care?
- Who was he?
- Beyond Einstein
- Einstein's legacy
- Kaku on Einstein
Annus Mirabilis in brief
two parts of science | dialectical method | defining science | Newton | Einstein's context |
1905, was quite an impressive year for Einstein's publications
1. photoelectrical connection
the photoelectric effect where photons generate a flow of electrons, in phosphorus for example.
2. special relativity an speed of light.
3. molecular (and atomic) movement
Brownian Motion as related to heat.
Einstein the
human being, his discoveries and his motives.
Germans & German unification, 1871.
His life span: 1879-1955
born March 14, 1879, Ulm.
1880, Munich, Bavaria.
1894, Milan, Italy.son of a business clerk he was weak in grade school
mixed experience in the Swiss Federal Polytechnic
self-taught in the electrical engineering
a fine technician
1902, worked in the Swiss patent office after graduate school
theoretical physicist
His discoveries in two miraculous years (annus mirabilis)
1904-05
- the relations of atoms & heat or Brownian motion
- electrons and photoelectricity or the photoelectrical effect
- and acceleration and gravity in “On the Elcetrodynamics of Moving Bodies;”
he invented a more precise prediction of a simpler system than Newton’s calculations.
1915
- inductive response to special relativity is general relativity
- revolutionized our concept of the universe with the architecture of space-time
- confirmed two anomalies in observational data
- Lifelong Ghandian pacifist, sought the unified field theory
“The laws of nature become simpler at higher dimensions”
(M. Kaku, p. 79)
Motives
Beliefs
the problem of light (electromagnetic spectrum)
scientific procedures
human ethical obligation
repression
Germany• Gell-Mann and Quarks (subatomic particles)
• Kaku, Beyond Einstein
Newton’s worldview:
- mechanical
- material
- incessantly moving
matter interacting with moving matter
- small invisible
balls, atoms or corpuscles in the ether of space
- stationary, flat,
- steadily advancing linear time
- Sir Isaac Newton
Galileo Galilei | Murray Gell-Mann | Jacob Bronowski | Stephen Hawking | Ernst Mayr | Ian Tattersall | Charles Darwin
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