
How Did Einstein Think? - wsieroci
http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/Goodies/Einstein_think/
======
stephengillie
Einstein's genius wasn't genesis nor synthesis. His genius was hard work.

<http://quantumrelativity.calsci.com/Relativity/Chapter1.html>

 _Georg Riemann lived in Germany from 1826 until 1866. He was Gauss' last and
most famous student. To finish his doctoral degree, in 1854 Riemann was
required to give a lecture. Gauss asked him to lecture on geometry. In this
single lecture, Riemann laid almost all of the mathematical foundation for
Einstein's General Relativity. Riemann went on to become an important
mathematician, but did little work on curved spaces after this one lecture._

Einstein took _8 years_ in a boring patent office to understand what Riemann
did in a lazy afternoon.

~~~
jerf
"Staircase wit": <http://mathpages.com/rr/s1-07/1-07.htm>

Taking a close look at Einstein's work (which that book as a whole does a
great job of) shows that certainly, Einstein was surrounded by the tools
necessary to do the job (Lorentz, Reimann, Minkowski), some dating back
decades... and yet, he _is_ the one who actually used them correctly. It
obviously was not an "obvious" synthesis, and in the end I do not think we can
come to any other conclusion than that Einstein still did something genuinely
important and interesting. It simply wasn't in the vacuum that the popular
understanding has it to be, but that's hardly surprising.

~~~
Create
What about all the others, namely Planck? Mach? Doppler? The geologists doing
seismology int the era (namely, same university)?

It was the spirit of the times (zeitgeist), for which he successfully claimed
credit for through tedious propaganda (the old guard deceased with time, which
also helped "new physics" to emerge)

~~~
jerf
I am at a loss as to how you seem to have read my _first sentence_ , which
named names of people who created various tools, as another claim that
Einstein invented this all on his own.

It was _not_ the spirit of the times. The spirit of the times was still
grappling with some sort of absolute reference frame. If it was the "spirit of
the times" it would have been discovered about 20 years earlier. It wasn't.

------
archagon
It's odd to me that we don't study creative thinking more. When it comes to
technical details, we've got it covered; you can find hundreds of textbooks on
any given field, from the arts to the sciences. But the mysterious step that
actually lets you recombine that knowledge into new ideas is usually shrugged
off as "hard work" or "inspiration".

On the other hand, I suppose it's a pretty difficult question to answer. If
you were to ask a musician how they compose their music, they would probably
talk about scales and chord progressions and improvisation. But the true
answer involves a whole lifetime of experiences and memories, filtered in a
specific way through the musician's brain to create certain musical effects,
themselves based on years of training. To even talk about that would require a
lot of introspection.

What if we could train ourselves to think like Einstein? What would this do
for science? What about Mozart and music?

~~~
tachyonbeam
This is true. I got interested in music, wanted to compose electronic music of
my own. I went on to read several books about music theory and composition. I
then realized that composing good music is extremely difficult, and has very
little to do with the study of music theory. I believe most musicians sort of
have a recipe book of tricks and patterns they discovered, which they combine
with some improvisation. These "known recipes" take a long time, lots of
practice and experimentation to acquire, and they are what makes an artist's
musical style, or flavor, so to speak. No amount of reading about music theory
will give you this. Interestingly, programming might be similar in many ways.

People complain when an artist releases an album, and there's only 2 good
tunes, the rest are just "filler". People might assume the artist was just
lazy or something, couldn't be bothered to put enough work into the album. I
think the reason that's so common is that well, it's just _that hard_ to
create good music: 2 songs is all the really good music they managed to create
in that time. Also makes you appreciate artists who can produce an album full
of good tunes, these people are exceptionally gifted.

------
carlob
I seems like interesting material, but why is it typeset this way?

~~~
SonicSoul
yep. it's hard to get over the whole typography of this essay. huge Serif
fonts, pink background on highlighted terms? multiple narrow columns.. it's
like staring at the sun

~~~
kafkaesque
It seems like if you copy-paste the text into notepad, it pastes correctly.

The layout of the text is peculiar, but I can't say it made me not want to
read it.

------
dmfdmf
I just finished listening to Walter Isaacson's biography "Einstein" (on CD).
What was distinctive about Einstein was not how he thought but what he thought
about.

His special theory of relativity is a solution to the contradiction between
Newtonian dynamics and the new (at the time) Maxwell's equations of
electrodynamics. It was a creative solution to a difficult problem.

Today we have a similar theoretical contradiction between Einstein's General
Relativity (large, galactic scale) and Quantum Mechanics (small, sub-atomic
scale) but no one is able to reconcile these two theories and it has been
shown that, as formulated, they are mathematically incompatible.

For years physicists ignored this problem because satisfying, productive
careers in physics could be based on pursuing all the implications of
Einstein's ideas and the parallel developments in Quantum Mechanics. This
period is now ending and I believe that somewhere in the world is the modern
equivalent of a "patent clerk" who is working on a new _conceptual_ approach
to physics that will allow the reconciliation of GR and QM.

~~~
jerf
"For years physicists ignored this problem..."

Physicits have not been ignoring the problem. String theory is but one attempt
to solve the problem. Physicists have _failed_ to solve the problem, but that
is not the same thing. Look at all the older dates discussed here:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_theory#History>

(Note I'm not advocating String Theory, just using it to prove my local point
here that the problem has not been ignored.)

~~~
dmfdmf
The context I was referring to was the era soon after the Einstein-Bohr
debates culminating in the Copenhagen interpretation of QM. This was an uneasy
truce and the attitude at the time was "shut up and calculate" -- meaning shut
up about the philosophic meaning and contradictions of the fundamental
theories of physics and just apply them or flesh out the implications. This
was fine until the late sixties when cosmology and black holes forced the
issue of reconciling GR and QM, of which String Theory is one avenue taken.

Personally, I think String Theory is a dead-end. However in my original
comment when I wrote that the current theories are incompatible "as
formulated", I leave open the possibility that a mathematical reformulation,
such as String Theory, may resolve the issues.

Personally, I think the problem will be solved by a new conceptual approach,
on the order of Einstein redefining the meaning of space and time. I also
think that it will come from someone outside of or on the fringes of
mainstream physics, such as Julian Barbour or someone, like Einstein, just
starting their career with nothing to lose on taking on such a grand challenge
with no guarantee of success.

~~~
jerf
"Personally, I think the problem will be solved by a new conceptual approach,"

As a computer scientist, I have to admit to being partial to more discrete
theories like loop quantum gravity. But whereas I'm willing to stick my nose
into some science's business and declare they're all Doing It Wrong, this is
not one of them. String theory is often criticized for having a lot of
predictions and not much evidence, but I think that to be fair, that's true of
all the competition, too. There just isn't enough evidence right now.

~~~
snowwrestler
I think it's likely that relativity and quantum mechanics will be reconciled
by an information-centric theory--which could easily come out of computer
science.

We call some patterns of energy "information" (like an algorithm) and other
patterns of energy "matter" (like a proton). It seems to me that the recent
mathematical study of information could be extended to cover matter as well.

Information theory is also a much younger branch of study than physics, which
would seem to indicate a longer runway for fundamental discoveries and
applications.

------
B-Con
This professor also has a book called "Einstein for Everyone", available for
free online here:

<http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/teaching/HPS_0410/chapters/>

~~~
Create
perhaps not.

“I treat my wife as an employee whom I cannot fire.”- A.E.

~~~
Bootvis
What is your quarrel with Einstein? You're not adding much to the conversation
in this way.

~~~
Create
I don't think we should idolize him for everyone to follow. The quote comes
from him, not me -- which makes your downvote revealing.

But please, do not believe a word from me. Read the full story and perhaps
reconsider your stance on Einstein.

~~~
Bootvis
I can't downvote and, in this case, wouldn't do so even if I could. I respect
your opinion and I fully agree with you that in the relation with his wife
Einstein was no saint.

However, I do not think it is relevant and the quote is also not very obscure.
Furthermore, claiming he used tedious propaganda to claim credit is taking it
to far without citing sources. I think I would downvote that if I could. From
what I've read his insights and work in physics were respected by his peers
and revolutionary. So for me how Einstein thought and attacked problems is
quite interesting. How he thought about _that_ is something I do want to
mimic.

------
bachback
Amazingly this article doesn't mention Immanuel Kant. If you read the
autobiographical notes, Kant is the first name that appears. And from there it
is quite a different step to the theory of relativity.

------
niels_olson
This is more important than anything about Yahoo and Tumblr. I read Isaacson's
biography in the hopes of extracting the answer to exactly this question. Upon
reading it, I found myself enormously relieved that my approach to Project
Euler problems, and math and physics problems in general, follows the same
form.

This does not seem to be how I approach medical problems. These seem to be
quite a bit more like a flow chart, maybe in the best cases it's a Bodie plot.

Research, however, does generally seem to follow this mold a bit better.

------
bitwize
That's kind of like asking "how did Bruce Lee fight?" innit?

~~~
stephengillie
While most fighters stick with the preset moves they learned in their dojo,
Bruce Lee would mix those moves with new moves he created himself. He was so
able to understand and control his physical self that he could generate new
martial arts moves spontaneously during fights.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeet_Kune_Do>

------
Create
<http://www.giagia.co.uk/2010/03/23/ada-lovelace-day-2010/>

------
maeon3
I've been working through the following book:

[http://www.amazon.com/How-Create-Mind-Thought-
Revealed/dp/06...](http://www.amazon.com/How-Create-Mind-Thought-
Revealed/dp/0670025291)

And it has a chapter (2 and 3) on stepping through exactly what algorithms and
data structures Einstein used to figure out that time itself slows down for
you to explain why traveling at fractions of the speed of light does not
change how fast light passes you by. More important than guessing time as the
variable property, he was expert at creating experiments to disprove his
hypothesis. "If this is the case, we should be able to do this exact
experiment to expose the exact value for time dilation as you approach speed
of light."

The book is about creating a program which exposes the operating principles of
Einstein's neo cortex that can do what Einstein did. To create simplistic
models that explain the underlying principles of physics, and has the ability
to say: "If we model the phenomenon like such, than we should be able to
observe the following phenomenon". Then to go out and perform a test gathering
evidence or disproving it. Then brute forcing this process and selecting for
the most simple model that explains all available data.

Show all hypothesis that explain all available data, that have not been
disproved, sorted by complexity of the model with most evidence collected for
it, and least evidence levied against it.

If each of these processes could be automated, we could use the world's
supercomputers to crunch out 500 years of physics scientific discovery in a
few years.

------
elleferrer
We can see how Einstein thought through this modern day Einstein: meet Jacob
Barnett (aka Einstein), a 14-Year-Old Master's degree student on his way to
earning a PhD in quantum physics. Truly a genius.

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/11/jacob-barnett-
autis...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/11/jacob-barnett-
autistic-14-year-old-nobel-prize_n_3254920.html)

~~~
mr-ron
Did you read OP article even? One of the main ideas is that his 'genius' took
years of meticulous work.

~~~
alberich
besides, obtaining a PhD, even at an early age, doesn't make you a genius...
well, at least not an Einstein-like genius.

~~~
elleferrer
I look at it through the way they both think, how they both process
information. He's a pretty interesting kid.

